THIRD PERIOD.

TO THE AGE OF THIRTY.

SECTION I.

I RETURNED home in April, 1819, and continued to reside in Norwich
till November, 1832. These thirteen years, extending from my entering upon
womanhood to my complete establishment in an independent position, as to
occupation and the management of my own life, seem to form a marked period
of themselves; and I shall treat them in that way.

My eldest sister’s marriage in 1820 made young women at once of Rachel and
myself. It was on all accounts a happy event, though we dreaded excessively
the loss of her from home, which she eminently graced. But never did woman
grow in grace more remarkably than she did by her marriage. When she had
found her own heart, it proved a truly noble one; and the generosity,
sweetness, and wisdom of her whole conduct towards her own children showed
that her mistakes in her treatment of us were merely the crudities of
inexperience. I may say, once for all, that her home at Newcastle was ever
open to us, and that all possible kindness from her hospitable husband and
herself was always at our command, without hindrance or difficulty, till my
recovery from a hopeless illness, in 1844, by Mesmerism, proved too much for
the natural prejudice of a surgeon and a surgeon’s wife, and caused, by the
help of the ill‐offices of another relation, a family breach, as absurd as
it was lamentable. My sister was then under the early symptoms of her last
illness; and matters might have ended more happily if
page: 76 she had been in her usual state of health and
nerve, as they certainly would if advantage had not been taken of her
natural irritation against Mesmerism to gratify in another jealousies to
which she was herself far superior. My own certainty of this, and my
grateful remembrance of the long course of years during which I enjoyed her
friendship and generosity, and her cordial sympathy in my aims and
successes, incline me to pass over her final alienation, and dwell upon the
affectionate intercourse we enjoyed, at frequent intervals, for twenty years
from her marriage day.

Our revered and beloved eldest brother had, by this time, settled in Norwich
as a surgeon, in partnership with our uncle, Mr. P.M. Martineau, the most
eminent provincial surgeon of his day,—in some departments, if not
altogether. My brother’s health was delicate, and we were to lose him by
death in five years. One of the sweetest recollections of my life is that I
had the honour and blessing of his intimate friendship, which grew and
deepened from my sister’s marriage to the time of his own death. My mother,
too, took me into her confidence more and more as my mind opened, and, I may
add, as my deafness increased, and bespoke for me her motherly sympathy. For
some years, indeed, there was a genuine and cordial friendship between my
mother and me, which was a benefit to me in all manner of ways; and, from
the time when I began to have literary enterprises, (and quite as much
before I obtained success as after) I was sustained by her trustful,
generous, self‐denying sympathy and maternal appreciation. After a time,
when she was fretted by cares and infirmities, I became as nervous in regard
to her as ever, (even to the entire breaking down of my health;) but during
the whole period of which I am now treating,—(and it is a very large space
in my life)—there were no limitations to our mutual confidence.

One other relation which reached its highest point, and had begun to decline,
during this period was one which I must abstain from discussing. The
briefest possible notice will be the best method of treatment. All who have
ever known me are aware that the strongest passion I have ever entertained
was
page: 77 in regard to my youngest brother,
who has certainly filled the largest space in the life of my affections of
any person whatever. Now, the fact,—the painful fact,—in the history of
human affections is that, of all natural relations, the least satisfactory
is the fraternal. Brothers are to sisters what sisters can never be to
brothers as objects of engrossing and devoted affection. The law of their
frames is answerable for this: and that other law—of equity—which sisters
are bound to obey, requires that they should not render their account of
their disappointments where there can be no fair reply. Under the same law,
sisters are bound to remember that they cannot be certain of their own
fitness to render an account of their own disappointments, or to form an
estimate of the share of blame which may be due to themselves on the score
of unreasonable expectations. These general considerations decide me to pass
over one of the main relations and influences of my life in a few brief and
unsatisfactory lines, though I might tell a very particular tale. If I could
see a more truthful, just, and satisfactory method of treating the topic, I
should most gladly adopt it.—As for the other members of our numerous
family, I am thankful and rejoiced to bear testimony that they have given
all possible encouragement to the labours of my life; and that they have
been the foremost of all the world to appreciate and rejoice in my
successes, and to respect that independence of judgment and action on my
part which must often have given them pain, and which would have overpowered
any generosity less deeply rooted in principle and affection than
theirs.

When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very
conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least in
provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew,—during
which reading aloud was permitted,—or to practice their music; but so as to
be fit to receive callers, without any signs of blue‐stockingism which could
be reported abroad. Jane Austen herself, the Queen of novelists, the
immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr. Knightly, and a score or two more of
unrivalled intimate friends of the whole public, was compelled by the
feelings of her family to
page: 78 cover up her
manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work, kept on the table for the
purpose, whenever any genteel people came in. So it was with other young
ladies, for some time after Jane Austen was in her grave; and thus my first
studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve. I was at
the work table regularly after breakfast,—making my own clothes, or the
shirts of the household, or about some fancy work: I went out walking with
the rest,—before dinner in winter, and after tea in summer: and if ever I
shut myself into my own room for an hour of solitude, I knew it was at the
risk of being sent for to join the sewing‐circle, or to read aloud,—I being
the reader, on account of my growing deafness. But I won time for what my
heart was set upon, nevertheless,—either in the early morning, or late at
night. I had a strange passion for translating, in those days; and a good
preparation it proved for the subsequent work of my life. Now, it was
meeting James at seven in the morning to read Lowth’s Prelections in the
Latin, after having been busy since five about something else, in my own
room. Now it was translating Tacitus, in order to try what was the utmost
compression of style that I could attain.—About this I may mention an
incident while it occurs. We had all grown up with a great reverence for
Mrs. Barbauld (which she fully deserved from much wiser people than
ourselves) and, reflectively, for Dr. Aikin, her brother,—also able in his
way, and far more industrious, but without her genius. Among a multitude of
other labours, Dr. Aikin had translated the Agricola of Tacitus. I went into
such an enthusiasm over the original, and especially over the celebrated
concluding passage, that I thought I would translate it, and correct it by
Dr. Aikin’s, which I could procure from our public library. I did it, and
found my own translation unquestionably the best of the two. I had spent an
infinity of pains over it,—word by word; and I am confident I was not wrong
in my judgment. I stood pained and mortified before my desk, I remember,
thinking how strange and small a matter was human achievement, if Dr.
Aikin’s fame was to be taken as a testimony of literary desert. I had beaten
him whom I had taken for my master. I need not point out that, in the
page: 79 first place, Dr. Aikin’s fame did not hang
on this particular work; nor that, in the second place, I had exaggerated
his fame by our sectarian estimate of him. I give the incident as a curious
little piece of personal experience, and one which helped to make me like
literary labour more for its own sake, and less for its rewards, than I
might otherwise have done.—Well: to return to my translating propensities.
Our cousin J.M.L., then studying for his profession in Norwich, used to read
Italian with Rachel and me,—also before breakfast. We made some considerable
progress, through the usual course of prose authors and poets; and out of
this grew a fit which Rachel and I at one time took, in concert with our
companions and neighbours, the C.’s, to translate Petrarch. Nothing could be
better as an exercise in composition than translating Petrach sonnets into
English of the same limits. It was putting ourselves under compulsion to do
with the Italian what I had set myself voluntarily to do with the Latin
author. I believe we really succeeded pretty well; and I am sure that all
these exercises were a singularly apt preparation for my after work. At the
same time, I went on studying Blair’s Rhetoric (for want of a better guide)
and inclining mightily to every kind of book or process which could improve
my literary skill,—really as if I had foreseen how I was to spend my
life.

These were not, however, my most precious or serious studies. I studied the
Bible incessantly and immensely; both by daily reading of chapters, after
the approved but mischievous method, and by getting hold of all commentaries
and works of elucidation that I could lay my hands on. A work of Dr.
Carpenter’s, begun but never finished, called “Notes and Observations on the
Gospel History,” which his catechumens used in class, first put me on this
track of study,—the results of which appeared some years afterwards in my
“Traditions of Palestine.” It was while reading Mr. Kenrick’s translation
from the German of “Helon’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” with which I was
thoroughly bewitched, that I conceived, and communicated to James, the
audacious idea of giving a somewhat resembling account of the Jews and their
country, under the immediate expectation of the
page: 80 Messiah, and even in his presence, while
carefully abstaining from permitting more than his shadow to pass over the
scene. This idea I cherished till I found courage, under a new inspiration
some years after, to execute it: and so pleasant was the original
suggestion, and so congenial the subject altogether, that even now, at the
distance of a quarter of a century, I regard that little volume with a
stronger affection than any other of my works but one;—that one being
“Eastern Life.”

Dr. Carpenter was inclined also to the study of philosophy, and wrote on
it,—on mental and moral philosophy; and this was enough, putting all
predisposition out of the question, to determine me to the study. He was of
the Locke and Hartley school altogether, as his articles on “Mental and
Moral Philosophy,” in Rees’s Cyclopedia, and his work on “Systematic
Education” show. He used to speak of Hartley as one who had the intellectual
qualities of the seraphic order combined with the affections of the
cherubic; and it was no wonder if Hartley became my idol when I was mistress
of my own course of study. I must clear myself from all charge of having
ever entertained his doctrine of Vibrations. I do not believe that Dr.
Carpenter himself could have prevailed with me so far as that. But neither
did Hartley prevail with Dr. Carpenter so far as that. The edition of
Hartley that I used was Dr. Priestley’s,—that which gives the philosophy of
Association, cleared from the incumbence of the Vibration theory. That book
I studied with a fervor and perseverance which made it perhaps the most
important book in the world to me, except the bible; and there really is in
it, amidst its monstrous deficiencies and absurdities, so much that is
philosophically true, as well as holy, elevating and charming, that its
influence might very well spread into all the events and experience of life,
and chasten the habits and feelings, as it did in my case during a long
series of years. So far from feeling, as Dr. Channing and other good men
have done, that the influence of that philosophy is necessarily, in all
cases, debasing, I am confident at this moment that the spirit of the men,
Locke and Hartley, redeems much of the fault of their doctrine in its
operation on young minds; and moreover, that the conscientious
page: 81 accuracy with which they apply their doctrine to
the moral conduct of the smallest particulars of human life (Hartley
particularly) forms a far better discipline, and produces a much more
exalting effect on the minds of students than the vague metaphysical
imaginations,—as various and irreconcilable as the minds that give them
forth, which Dr. Channing and his spiritual school adopted (or believed that
they adopted) as a “spiritual philosophy.” I know this,—that while I read
the Germans, Americans and English who am the received exponents of that
philosophy with a general and extremely vague sense of elevation and beauty
as the highest emotion produced, I cannot at this hour look at the portrait
of Hartley prefixed to his work, or glance at his strange Scholia,—which I
could almost repeat, word for word,—without a strong revival of the old mood
of earnest desire of self‐discipline, and devotion to duty which I derived
from them in my youth. While the one school has little advantage over the
other in the abstract department of their philosophy, the disciples of
Hartley have infinitely the advantage over the dreaming school in their
master’s presentment of the concrete department of fact and of action.
Compelled as I have since been to relinquish both as philosophy, I am bound
to avow, (and enjoy the avowal) that I owe to Hartley the strongest and best
stimulus and discipline of the highest affections and most important habits
that it is perhaps possible, (or was possible for me) to derive from any
book.—The study of Priestley’s character and works (natural to me because he
was the great apostle of Unitarianism) necessarily led me to the study of
the Scotch school of philosophy, which I took the liberty to enjoy in its
own way, in spite of Priestley’s contempt of it. I never believed in it,
because it was really inconceivable to me how anybody should; and I was
moreover entirely wrong in not perceiving that the Scotch philosophers had
got hold of a fragment of sound truth which the other school had missed,—in
their postulate of a fundamental complete faculty, which could serve as a
basis of the mind’s operations,—whereas Hartley lays down simply the
principle of association, and a capacity for pleasure and pain. I ought to
have perceived that the Scotch proposition of Common
page: 82 Sense would answer much better for purposes of
interpretation, if I had not yet knowledge enough to show me that it was
much nearer the fact of the case. I did not perceive this, but talked as
flippantly as Priestley, with far less right to do so. At the same time, I
surrendered myself, to a considerable extent, to the charm of Dugald
Stewart’s writings,—having no doubt that Priestley, if then living, would
have done so too. About Beattie and Reid I was pert enough, from a genuine
feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of their writings; but the truth of detail
scattered through Dugald Stewart’s elegant elucidations, the gentle and
happy spirit, and the beautiful style, charmed me so much that I must have
been among his most affectionate disciples, if I had not been fortified
against his seductions by my devotion to Hartley.

It appears to me now that, though my prevailing weakness in study is
excessive sympathy, intellectual as well as moral, with my author, I even
then felt something of the need which long after became all‐powerful in me,
of a clear distinction between the knowable and the unknowable,—of some
available indication of an indisputable point of view, whence one’s
contemplation of human nature, as of every thing else in the universe,
should make its range. It may be that I am carrying back too far in my life
this sense of need. When I consider how contentedly I went on, during the
whole of this third period, floating and floundering among metaphysical
imaginations, and giving forth inbred conceptions as truths of fact, I am
disposed to think it probable that I am casting back the light of a later
time among the mists of an earlier, and supposing myself sooner capable than
I really was of practically distinguishing between a conception and a
conviction. But there can be no mistake about the time and manner of my
laying hold of a genuine conviction in a genuine manner, as I will presently
tell. It would no doubt haste been a fine thing for me,—an event which would
have elevated my whole after‐life,—if a teacher had been at hand to show ms
the boundary line between the knowable and the unknowable, as I see it now,
and to indicate to me that the purely human view of the universe, derived
solely from within, and proceeding
page: 83 on the
supposition that Man and his affairs and his world are the centre and crown
of the universe, could not possibly be the true one. But, in the absence of
such a teacher,—in my inability to see the real scope and final operation of
the discovery of Copernicus and Galileo,—and the ultimate connexion of
physical and moral science,—it was the next best thing, perhaps, to obtain
by my own forces, and for my own use, the grand conviction which henceforth
gave to my life whatever it has had of steadiness, consistency, and
progressiveness.

I have told how, when I was eleven years old, I put a question to my brother
about the old difficulty of foreknowledge and freewill,—the reconciliation
of God’s power and benevolence,—and how I was baulked of an answer. That
question had been in my mind ever since; and I was not driven from
entertaining it by Milton’s account of its being a favourite controversy in
hell, nor even by a rebuke administered to one of our family by Mr. Turner
of Newcastle, who disapproved inquiry into what he took for granted to be an
unknowable thing. To me it seemed, turn it which way I would, to be
certainly a knowable thing,—so closely as it presses on human morality,—to
say nothing of man’s religion and internal peace. Its being reconcilable
with theology is quite another affair. I tried long to satisfy myself with
the ordinary subterfuge;—with declaring myself satisfied that good comes out
of evil, and a kind of good which could accrue in no other way: but this
would not do. I wrote religious poetry upon it, and wrought myself up to it
in talk: but it would not do. This was no solution; and it was unworthy of a
rational being to pretend to think it so. I tried acquiescence and dismissal
of the subject; but that would not do, because it brought after it a clear
admission of the failure of the scheme of creation in the first place, and
of the Christian scheme in the next. The time I am now speaking of was, of
course, prior to my study of Priestley and of Hartley, or I should have
known that there was a recognised doctrine of Necessity.

One summer afternoon, when my brother James (then my oracle) was sitting with
my mother and me, telling us some of his experiences after his first session
at the York College (the
Unita‐
page: 84 rian
Unitarian
college) I seized upon some intimation that he dropped about this
same doctrine of Necessity. I uttered the difficulty which had lain in my
mind for so many years; and he just informed me that there was, or was held
to be, a solution in that direction, and advised me to make it out for
myself. I did so. From that time the question possessed me. Now that I had
got leave, as it were, to apply the Necessarian solution, I did it
incessantly. I fairly laid hold of the conception of general laws, while
still far from being prepared to let go the notion of a special Providence.
Though at times almost overwhelmed by the vastness of the view opened to me,
and by the prodigious change requisite in my moral views and
self‐management, the revolution was safely gone through. My laboring brain
and beating heart grew quiet, and something more like peace than I had ever
yet known settled down upon my anxious mind. Being aware of my weakness of
undue sympathy with authors whom I read with any moral interest, I resolved
to read nothing on this question till I had thought it out; and I kept to my
resolve. When I was wholly satisfied, and could use my new method of
interpretation in all cases that occurred with readiness and ease, I read
every book that I could hear of on the subject of the Will; and I need not
add that I derived confirmation from all I read on both sides. I am bound to
add that the moral effect of this process was most salutary and cheering.
From the time when I became convinced of the certainty of the action of
laws, of the true importance of good influences and good habits, of the
firmness, in short, of the ground I was treading, and of the security of the
results which I should take the right means to attain, a new vigour pervaded
my whole life, a new light spread through my mind, and I began to experience
a steady growth in self‐command, courage, and consequent integrity and
disinterestedness. I was feeble and selfish enough at best; but yet, I was
like a new creature in the strength of a sound conviction. Life also was
like something fresh and wonderfully interesting, now that I held in my hand
this key whereby to interpret some of the most conspicuous of its
mysteries.

That great event in my life seems very remote; and I have
page: 85 been hearing more or less of the free‐will
difficulty ever since; and yet it appears to me, now as then, that none but
Necessarians at all understand the Necessarian doctrine. This is merely
saying in other words that its truth is so irresistible that, when once
understood, it is adopted as a matter of course. Some, no doubt, say of the
doctrine that every body can prove it, but nobody believes it; an assertion
so far from true as not to be worth contesting, if I may judge by my own
intercourses. Certainly, all the best minds I know are among the
Necessarians;—all indeed which are qualified to discuss the subject at all.
Moreover, all the world is practically Necessarian. All human action
proceeds on the supposition that all the workings of the universe are
governed by laws which cannot be broken by human will. In fact, the mistake
of the majority in this matter is usually in supposing an interference
between the will and the action of Man. The very smallest amount of science
is enough to enable any rational person to see that the constitution and
action of the human faculty of Will are determined by influences beyond the
control of the possessor of the faculty: and when this very plain fact is
denied in words it is usually because the denier is thinking of something
else,—not of the faculty of willing, but of executing the volition. It is
not my business here to argue out a question which has been settled in my
own mind for the greater part of my life; but I have said thus much in
explanation of the great importance of the conviction to me. For above
thirty years I have seen more and more clearly how awful, and how
irremediable except by the spread of a true philosophy, are the evils which
arise from that monstrous remnant of old superstition,—the supposition of a
self‐determining power, independent of laws, in the human will; and I can
truly say that if I have had the blessing of any available strength under
sorrow, perplexity, sickness and toil, during a life which has been any
thing but easy, it is owing to my repose upon eternal and irreversible laws,
working in every department of the universe, without any interference from
any random will, human or divine.—As to the ordinary objection to the
doctrine,—that it is good for endurance but bad for action,—besides the
obvious
page: 86 reply that every doctrine is to
be accepted or rejected for its truth or falsehood, and not because mere
human beings fancy its tendency to be good or bad,—I am bound to reply from
my own experience that the allegation is not true. My life has been
(whatever else) a very busy one; and this conviction, of the invariable
action of fixed laws, has certainly been the main‐spring of my activity.
When it is considered that, according to the Necessarian doctrine, no action
falls to produce effects, and no effort can be lost, there seems every
reason for the conclusion which I have no doubt is the fact, that true
Necessarians must be the most diligent and confident of all workers. The
indolent dreamers whom I happen to know are those who find an excuse for
their idleness in the doctrine of free‐will, which certainly leaves but
scanty encouragement to exertion of any sort: and at the same time, the
noblest activity that I ever witness, the most cheerful and self‐denying
toil, is on the part of those who hold the Necessarian doctrine as a vital
conviction.

As to the effect of that conviction on my religion, in those days of my
fanaticism and afterwards, I had better give some account of it here, though
it will lead me on to a date beyond the limits of this third period of my
life.—In the first place, it appeared to me when I was twenty, as it appears
to me now, that the New Testament proceeds on the ground of necessarian,
rather than free‐will doctrine. The prayer for daily bread is there, it is
true; but the Lord’s prayer is compiled from very ancient materials of the
theocratic age. The fatalistic element of the Essene doctrine strongly
pervades the doctrine and morality of Christ and the apostles; and its
curious union with the doctrine of a special providence is possible only
under the theocratic supposition which is the basis of the whole faith.—As
for me, I seized upon the necessarian element with eagerness, as enabling me
to hold to my cherished faith; and I presently perceived, and took instant
advantage of the discovery, that the practice of prayer, as prevailing
throughout Christendom, is wholly unauthorized by the New Testament.
Christian prayer, as prevailing at this day, answers precisely to the
description of that pharisaic prayer which Christ reprobated. His own
method
page: 87 of praying, the prayer he gave
to his disciples, and their practice, were all wholly unlike any thing now
understood by Christian prayer, in protestant as well as catholic countries.
I changed my method accordingly,—gradually, perhaps, but beginning
immediately and decidedly. Not knowing what was good for me, and being sure
that every external thing would come to pass just the same, whether I liked
it or not, I ceased to desire, and therefore to pray for, any thing
external,—whether “daily bread,” or health, or life for myself or others, or
any thing whatever but spiritual good. There I for a long time drew the
line. Many years after I had outgrown the childishness of wishing for I knew
not what,—of praying for what might be either good or evil,—I continued to
pray for spiritual benefits. I can hardly say for spiritual aid; for I took
the necessarian view of even the higher form of prayer,—that it brought
about, or might bring about, its own accomplishment by the spiritual
dispositions which it excited and cherished. This view is so far from
simple, and so irreconcilable with the notion of a revelation of a scheme of
salvation, that it is clear that the one or the other view must soon give
way. The process in my case was this. A long series of grave misfortunes
brought me to the conviction that there is no saying beforehand what the
external conditions of internal peace really are. I found myself now and
then in the loftiest moods of cheerfulness when in the midst of
circumstances which I had most dreaded, and the converse; and thus I grew to
be, generally speaking, really and truly careless as to what became of me. I
had cast off the torment of fear, except in occasional weak moments. This
experience presently extended to my spiritual affairs. I found myself best,
according to all trustworthy tests of goodness, when I cared least about the
matter. I continued my practice of nightly examination of my hourly conduct;
and the evidence grew wonderfully strong that moral advancement came out of
good influences rather than self‐management; and that even so much
self‐reference as was involved in “working out one’s own salvation with fear
and trembling” was demoralizing. Thus I arrived,—after long years,—at the
same point of ease or resignation about my spiritual as my
page: 88 temporal affairs, and felt that (to use a broad
expression uttered by somebody) it was better to take the chance of being
damned than be always quacking one’s self in the fear of it. (Not that I had
any literal notion of being damned,—any more than any other born and bred
Unitarian.) What I could not desire for myself, I could not think of
stipulating for others; and thus, in regard to petition, my prayers became
simply an aspiration,—“Thy will be done!” But still, the department of
praise remained. I need hardly say that I soon drew back in shame from
offering to a Divine being a homage which would be offensive to an earthly
one: and when this practice was over, my devotions consisted in
aspiration,—very frequent and heartfelt,—under all circumstances and
influences, and much as I meditate now, almost hourly, on the mysteries of
life and the universe, and the great science and art of human duty. In
proportion as the taint of fear and desire and self‐regard fell off, and the
meditation had fact instead of passion for its subject, the aspiration
became freer and sweeter, till at length, when the selfish superstition had
wholly gone out of it, it spread its charm through every change of every
waking hour,—and does now, when life itself is expiring.

As to the effect that all this had on my belief in Christianity,—it did not
prevent my holding on in that pseudo‐acceptance of it which my Unitarian
breeding rendered easy. It was a grand discovery to me when I somewhere met
with the indication, (since become a rather favourite topic with Unitarian
preachers) that the fact of the miracles has nothing whatever to do with the
quality of the doctrine. When miracles are appealed to by the Orthodox as a
proof of, not only the supernatural orion, but the divine quality of the
doctrine, the obvious answer is that devils may work miracles, and the
doctrine may therefore be from hell. Such was the argument in Christ’s time;
and such is it now among a good many protestants,—horrifying the Catholics
and High‐Churchmen of our time as much as it horrified the evangelists of
old. The use to which it is turned by many who still call themselves
Unitarians, and to which it was applied by me is—the holding to Christianity
in a manner as a revelation, after
page: 89
surrendering belief in the miracles. I suppose the majority of Unitarians
still accept all the miracles (except the Miraculous Conception, of
course)—even to the withering away of the fig‐tree. Some hold to the
resurrection, while giving up all the rest; and not a few do as I did,—say
that the interior evidence of a divine origin of that doctrine is enough,
and that no amount of miracles could strengthen their faith. It is clear
however that a Christianity which never was received as a scheme of
salvation,—which never was regarded as essential to salvation,—which might
be treated, in respect to its records, at the will and pleasure of each
believer,—which is next declared to be independent of its external
evidences, because those evidences are found to be untenable,—and which is
finally subjected in its doctrines, as in its letter, to the interpretation
of each individual,—must cease to be a faith, and become a matter of
speculation, of spiritual convenience, and of intellectual and moral taste,
till it declines to the rank of a mere fact in the history of mankind. These
are the gradations through which I passed. It took many years to travel
through them; and I lingered long in the stages of speculation and taste,
intellectual and moral. But at length I recognized the monstrous
superstition in its true character of a great fact in the history of the
race, and found myself, with the last link of my chain snapped,—a free rover
on the broad, bright breezy common of the universe.

page: 90

SECTION II.

AT this time,—(I think it must have been in 1821,) was my first
appearance in print. I had some early aspirations after authorship,—judging
by an anecdote which hangs in my memory, though I believe I never thought
about it, more or less, while undergoing that preparation which I have
described in my account of my studies and translations. When I was assorting
and tabulating scripture texts, in the way I described some way back, I one
day told my mother, in a moment of confidence, that I hoped it might be
printed, and make a book, and then I should be an authoress. My mother,
pleased, I believe, with the aspiration, told my eldest sister; and she, in
an unfortunate moment of contempt, twitted me with my conceit in fancying I
could be an authoress; whereupon I instantly resolved “never to tell any
body any thing again.” How this resolution was kept it is rather amusing now
to consider, seeing that of all people in the world, I have perhaps the
fewest reserves. The ambition seems to have disappeared from that time; and
when I did attempt to write, it was at the suggestion of another, and
against my own judgment and inclination. My brother James, then my idolized
companion, discovered how wretched I was when he left me for his college,
after the vacation; and he told me that I must not permit myself to be so
miserable. He advised me to take refuge, on each occasion, in a new pursuit;
and on that particular occasion, in an attempt at authorship. I said, as
usual, that I would if he would: to which he answered that it would never do
for him, a young student, to rush into print before the eyes of his tutors;
but he desired me to write something that was in my head, and try my chance
with it in the “Monthly Repository,”—the poor little Unitarian periodical in
which I have mentioned that Talfourd tried his young powers. What James
page: 91 desired, I always did, as of course; and
after he had left me to my widowhood soon after six o’clock, one bright
September morning, I was at my desk before seven, beginning a letter to the
Editor of the “Monthly Repository,”—that editor being the formidable prime
minister of his sect,—Rev. Robert Aspland. I suppose I must tell what that
first paper was, though I had much rather not; for I am so heartily ashamed
of the whole business as never to have looked at the article since the first
flutter of it went off. It was on Female Writers on Practical Divinity. I
wrote away, in my abominable scrawl of those days, on foolscap paper,
feeling mighty like a fool all the time. I told no one, and carried my
expensive packet to the post‐office myself, to pay the postage. I took the
letter V for my signature,—I cannot at all remember why. The time was very
near the end of the month: I had no definite expectation that I should ever
hear any thing of my paper; and certainly did not suppose it could be in the
forthcoming number. That number was sent in before service‐time on a Sunday
morning. My heart may have been beating when I laid hands on it; but it
thumped prodigiously when I saw my article there, and, in the Notices to
Correspondents, a request to bear more from V. of Norwich. There is
certainly something entirely peculiar in the sensation of seeing one’sself
in print for the first time:—the lines burn themselves in upon the brain in
a way of which black ink is incapable, in any other mode. So I felt that
day, when I went about with my secret.—I have said what my eldest brother
was to us,—in what reverence we held him. He was just married, and he and
his bride asked me to return from chapel with them to tea. After tea he
said, “Come now, we have had plenty of talk; I will read you something;” and
he held out his hand for the new “Repository.” After glancing at it, he
exclaimed, “They have got a new hand here. Listen.” After a paragraph, he
repeated, “Ah! this is a new hand; they have had nothing so good as this for
a long while.” (It would be impossible to convey to any who do not know the
“Monthly Repository” of that day, how very small a compliment this was.) I
was silent, of course. At the end of the first column,
page: 92 he exclaimed about the style, looking at me in
some wonder at my being as still as a mouse. Next (and well I remember his
tone, and thrill to it still) his words were—“What a fine sentence that is!
Why, do you not think so?” I mumbled out, sillily enough, that it did not
seem any thing particular. “Then,” said he, “you were not listening. I will
read it again. There now!” As he still got nothing out of me, he turned
round upon me, as we sat side by side on the sofa, with “Harriet, what is
the matter with you? I never knew you so slow to praise any thing before.” I
replied, in utter confusion,—“I never could baffle any body. The truth is,
that paper is mine.” He made no reply; read on in silence, and spoke no more
till I was on my feet to come away. He then laid his hand on my shoulder,
and said gravely (calling me “dear” for the first time) “Now, dear, leave it
to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself
to this.” I went home in a sort of dream, so that the squares of the
pavement seemed to float before my eyes. That evening made me an
authoress.

It was not all so glorious, however. I immediately after began to write my
first work,—“Devotional Exercises,” of which I now remember nothing. But I
remember my brother’s anxious doubting looks, in which I discerned some
disappointment, as he read the M.S. I remember his gentle hints about
precision and arrangement of ideas, given with the utmost care not to
discourage me; and I understood the significance of his praise of the
concluding essay (in a letter from Madeira, where he was closing his
precious life)—praise of the definiteness of object in that essay, which, as
he observed, furnished the key to his doubts about the rest of the book, and
which he conveyed only from an anxious desire that I should work my way up
to the high reputation which he felt I was destined to attain. This just and
gentle treatment, contrasting with the early discouragements which had
confused my own judgment, affected me inexpressibly. I took these hints to
heart in trying my hand at a sort of theologico‐metaphysical novel, which I
entered upon with a notion of enlightening the world through the same kind
of interest as was then excited by Mr. Ward’s novel, “Tremaine,”
page: 93 which was making a prodigious noise, and which
perfectly enchanted me, except by its bad philosophy. I mighty enjoyed the
prospect of this work, as did my mother; and I was flattered by finding that
Rachel had higher expectations from it than even my own. But, at the end of
half a volume, I became aware that it was excessively dull, and I stopped.
Many years afterwards I burned it; and this is the only piece of my work but
two (and a review) in my whole career that never was published.

Already I found that it would not do to copy what I wrote; and here (at the
outset of this novel) I discontinued the practice for ever,—thus saving an
immense amount of time which I humbly think is wasted by other authors. The
prevalent doctrine about revision and copying, and especially Miss
Edgeworth’s account of her method of writing,—scribbling first, then
submitting her manuscript to her father, and copying and altering many times
over till, (if I remember right) no one paragraph of her “Leonora” stood at
last as it did at first,—made me suppose copying and alteration to be
indispensable. But I immediately found that there was no use in copying if I
did not alter; and that, if ever I did alter, I had to change back again;
and I, once for all committed myself to a single copy. I believe the only
writings I ever copied were “Devotional Exercises,” and my first tale;—a
trumpery story called “Christmas Day.” It seemed clear to me that
distinctness and precision must be lost if alterations were made in a
different state of mind from that which suggested the first utterance; and I
was delighted when, long afterwards, I met with Cobbett’s advice;—to know
first what you want to say, and then say it in the first words that occur to
you. The excellence of Cobbett’s style, and the manifest falling off of Miss
Edgeworth’s after her father’s death (so frankly avowed by herself) were
strong confirmations of my own experience. I have since, more than once,
weakly fallen into mannerism,—now metaphysically elliptical,—now poetically
amplified, and even, in one instance, bordering on the Carlylish; but
through all this folly, as well as since having a style of my own,—(that is,
finding expression by words as
page: 94 easy as
breathing air)—I have always used the same method in writing. I have always
made sure of what I meant to say, and then written it down without care or
anxiety,—glancing at it again only to see if any words were omitted or
repeated, and not altering a single phrase in a whole work. I mention this
because I think I perceive that great mischief arises from the notion that
botching in the second place will compensate for carelessness in the first.
I think I perceive that confusion of thought, and cloudiness or affectation
in style are produced or aggravated by faulty prepossessions in regard to
the method of writing for the press. The mere saving of time and labour in
my own case may be regarded as no inconsiderable addition to my term of
life.—Some modifications of this doctrine there must of course be in
accordance with the strength or weakness of the natural faculty of
expression by language: but I speak as strongly as I have just done because
I have no reason to believe that the natural aptitude was particularly
strong in myself. I believe that such facility as I have enjoyed has been
mainly owing to my unconscious preparatory discipline; and especially in the
practice of translation from various languages, as above related. And,
again, after seeing the manuscripts or proof‐sheets of many of the chief
authors of my own time, I am qualified to say that the most marked
mannerists of their day are precisely those whose manuscripts show most
erasures and their proof‐sheets most alterations.

page: 95

Section III.

I HAVE said that it was through a long train of calamities that I
learned some valuable truths and habits. Those calamities were now coming
fast upon me. In 1820, my deafness was suddenly encreased by what might be
called an accident, which I do not wish to describe. I ought undoubtedly to
have begun at that time to use a trumpet; but no one pressed it upon me; and
I do not know that, if urged, I should have yielded; for I had abundance of
that false shame which hinders nine deaf people out of ten from doing their
duty in that particular. The redeeming quality of personal infirmity is that
it brings its special duty with it; but this privilege waits long to be
recognized. The special duty of the deaf is, in the first place, to spare
other people as much fatigue as possible; and, in the next, to preserve
their own natural capacity for sound, and habit of receiving it, and true
memory of it, as long as possible. It was long before I saw, or fully
admitted this to myself; and it was ten years from this time before I began
to use a trumpet. Thus, I have felt myself qualified to say more in the way
of exhortation and remonstrance to deaf people than could be said by any one
who had not only never been deaf, but had never shared the selfish and
morbid feelings which are the ordinary attendant curses of suffering so
absolutely peculiar as that of personal infirmity.

Next, our beloved brother, who had always shown a tendency to consumption,
ruptured a blood‐vessel in the lungs, and had to give up his practice and
professional offices, and to go, first into Devonshire, and afterwards to
Madeira, whence he never returned. He died at sea, on his way home. I went
with him and his wife into Devonshire, for the spring of 1823; and it was my
office to read aloud for many hours of every day, which I did
page: 96 with great satisfaction, and with inestimable
profit from his comments and unsurpassed conversation. Before breakfast, and
while he enjoyed his classical reading on the sofa, I rambled about the
neighbourhood of Torquay,—sometimes sketching, sometimes reading, sometimes
studying the sea from the shelter of the caves, and, on the whole, learning
to see nature, under those grave circumstances, with new eyes. Soon after
our return, their child was born; and never was infant more beloved. It was
my great solace during the dreary season of dismantling that home which we
had had so much delight in forming, and sending those from us who were the
joy of our lives. It was then that I learned the lesson I spoke of,—of our
peace of mind being, at least in times of crisis, independent of external
circumstances. Day by day, I had been silently growing more heartsick at the
prospect of the parting; and I especially dreaded the night before;—the
going to bed, with the thoughtful night before me, after seeing every thing
packed, and knowing that the task of the coming day was the parting. Yet
that night was one of the happiest of my life. It is easy to conceive what
the process of thought was, and what the character of the religious emotion
which so elevated me. The lesson was a sound one, whatever might be the
virtue of the thoughts and feelings involved. The next day, all was over at
length. I was the last who held the dear baby,—even to the moment of his
being put into the carriage. The voyage was injurious to him; and it was
probably the cause of his death, which took place soon after reaching
Madeira. There was something peaceful, and very salutary in the next winter,
though it could not reasonably be called a very happy one. There was a close
mutual reliance between my mother and myself,—my sister Rachel being absent,
and our precious little Ellen, the family darling, at school. We kept up a
close correspondence with our absent ones; and there were the beautiful
Madeira letters always to look for. I remember reading Clarendon’s Rebellion
aloud to my mother in the evenings; and we took regular walks in all
weathers. I had my own troubles and anxieties, however. A dream had passed
before me since the visit of a student friend of my brother James’s,
which
page: 97 some words of my father’s and
mother’s had strengthened into hope and trust. This hope was destined to be
crushed for a time in two hearts by the evil offices of one who had much to
answer for in what he did. This winter was part of the time of suspense.
Under my somewhat heavy troubles my health had some time before begun to
give way; and now I was suffering from digestive derangement which was not
cured for four years after; and then only after severe and daily pain from
chronic inflammation of the stomach. Still, with an ailing body, an anxious
and often aching heart, and a mind which dreaded looking into the future, I
regarded this winter of 1823‐4 as a happy one;—the secret of which I believe
to have been that I felt myself beloved at home, and enjoyed the keen relish
of duties growing out of domestic love. At the end of the next June, my
brother died. We were all prepared for the event, as far as preparation is
ever possible; but my dear father, the most unselfish of men, who never
spoke of his own feelings, and always considered other people’s, never, we
think, recovered from this grief. He was very quiet at the time; but his
health began to go wrong, and his countenance to alter; and during the two
remaining years of his life, he sustained a succession of cares which might
have broken down a frame less predisposed for disease than his had become.
In our remembrance of him there is no pain on the ground of any thing in his
character. Humble, simple, upright, self‐denying, affectionate to as many
people as possible, and kindly to all, he gave no pain, and did all the good
he could. He had not the advantage of an adequate education; but there was a
natural shrewdness about him which partly compensated for the want. He was
not the less, but the more, anxious to give his children the advantages
which he had never received; and the whole family have always felt that they
owe a boundless debt of gratitude to both their parents for the
self‐sacrificing efforts they made, through all the vicissitudes of the
times, to fit their children in the best possible manner for independent
action in life. My father’s business, that of a Norwich manufacturer, was
subject to the fluctuations to which all manufacture was liable during the
war, and to others of its own; and our parents’
page: 98 method was to have no reserves from their
children, to let us know precisely the state of their affairs, and to hold
out to us, in the light of this evidence, the probability that we might
sooner or later have to work for our own living,—daughters as well as
sons,—and that it was improbable that we should ever be rich. The time was
approaching which was to prove the wisdom of their method. My father’s
business, never a very enriching one, had been for some time prosperous; and
this year (1824) he indulged my brother James and myself with a journey;—a
walking tour in Scotland, in the course of which we walked five hundred
miles in a month. I am certainly of opinion now that that trip aggravated my
stomach‐complaint; and I only wonder it was no worse. I spent the next
winter with my married sister, my sister‐in‐law, and other friends, and
returned to Norwich in April, to undergo long months,—even years—of anxiety
and grief.

In the reviews of my “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” one chapter is
noticed more emphatically than all the rest;—the chapter on the
speculations, collapse, and crash of 1825 and 1826. If that chapter is
written with some energy, it is no wonder; for our family fortunes were
implicated in that desperate struggle, and its issue determined the whole
course of life of the younger members of our family,—my own among the rest.
One point on which my narrative in the History is emphatic is the hardship
on the sober man of business of being involved in the destruction which
overtook the speculator; and I had family and personal reasons for saying
this. My father never speculated; but he was well nigh ruined during that
calamitous season by the deterioration in value of his stock. His stock of
manufactured goods was larger, of course, than it would have been in a time
of less enterprise; and week by week its value declined, till, in the middle
of the winter, when the banks were crashing down all over England, we began
to contemplate absolute ruin. My.father was evidently a dying man;—not from
anxiety of mind, for his liver disease was found to be owing to obstruction
caused by a prodigious gall‐stone: but his illness was no doubt aggravated
and rendered more harassing by his cares for his
page: 99 family. In the spring he was sent to Cheltenham,
whence he returned after some weeks with the impression of approaching death
on his face. He altered his Will, mournfully reducing the portions left to
his daughters to something which could barely be called an independence.
Then, three weeks before his death, he wisely, and to our great relief,
dismissed the whole subject. He told my brother Henry, his partner in the
business, that he had done what he could while he could: that he was now a
dying man, and could be of no further use in the struggle, and that he
wished to keep his mind easy for his few remaining days: so he desired to
see no more letters of business, and to hear no more details. For a few more
days, he sunned himself on the grass‐plat in the garden, in the warm June
mornings: then could not leave the house; then could not come down stairs;
and, towards the end of the month died quietly, with all his family round
his bed.—As for my share in this family experience,—it was delightful to me
that he took an affectionate pleasure in my poor little book,—of value to me
now for that alone,—“Addresses, Prayers and Hymns, for the use of families
and school.” It was going through the press at that time; and great was my
father’s satisfaction; and high were his hopes, I believe, of what I should
one day be and do. Otherwise, I have little comfort in thinking of his last
illness. The old habit of fear came upon me, more irresistibly than ever, on
the assembling of the family; and I mourn to think how I kept out of the
way, whenever it was possible, and how little I said to my father of what
was in my heart about him and my feelings towards him. The more easily his
humility was satisfied with whatever share of good fell to him, the more
richly he should have been ministered to. By me he was not,—owing to this
unhappy shyness. My married sister, who was an incomparable nurse, did the
duty of others besides her own; and mine among the rest, while I was
sorrowing and bitterly chiding myself in silence, and perhaps in apparent
insensibility.

And now my own special trial was at hand. It is not necessary to go into
detail about it. The news which got abroad that we had grown comparatively
poor,—and the evident certainty
page: 100 that we
were never likely to be rich, so wrought upon the mind of one friend as to
break down the mischief which I have referred to as caused by ill‐offices.
My friend had believed me rich, was generous about making me a poor man’s
wife, and had been discouraged in more ways than one. He now came to me, and
we were soon virtually engaged. I was at first very anxious and unhappy. My
veneration for his morale was such that I
felt that I dared not undertake the charge of his happiness: and yet I dared
not refuse, because I saw it would be his death blow. I was ill,—I was
deaf,—I was in an entangled state of mind between conflicting duties and
some lower considerations; and many a time did I wish, in my fear that I
should fail, that had never seen him. I am far from wishing that now;—now
that the beauty of his goodness remains to me, clear of all painful regrets.
But there was a fearful period to pass through. Just when I was growing
happy, surmounting my fears and doubts, and enjoying his attachment, the
consequences of his long struggle and suspense overtook him. He became
suddenly insane; and after months of illness of body and mind, he died. The
calamity was aggravated to me by the unaccountable insults I received from
his family, whom I had never seen. years afterwards, when his sister and I
met, the mystery was explained. His family had been given to understand, by
cautious insinuations, that I was actually engaged to another, while
receiving my friend’s addresses! There has never been any doubt in my mind
that, considering what I was in those days, it was happiest for us both that
our union was prevented by any means. I am, in truth, very thankful for not
having married at all. I have never since been tempted, nor have suffered
any thing at all in relation to that matter which is held to be
all‐important to woman,—love and marriage. Nothing, I mean, beyond
occasional annoyance, presently disposed of. Every literary woman, no doubt,
has plenty of importunity of that sort to deal with; but freedom of mind and
coolness of manner dispose of it very easily: and since the time I have been
speaking of, my mind has been wholly free from all idea of love affairs. My
subsequent literary life in London was clear from all difficulty and
embarrassment,
page: 101 —no doubt because I was
evidently too busy, and too full of interests of other kinds to feel any
awkwardness,—to say nothing of my being then thirty years of age; an age at
which, if ever, a woman is certainly qualified to take care of herself. I
can easily conceive how I might have been tempted,—how some deep springs in
my nature might have been touched, then as earlier; but, as a matter of
fact, they never were; and I consider the immunity a great blessing, under
the liabilities of a moral condition such as mine was in the olden time. If
I had had a husband dependent on me for his happiness, the responsibility
would have made me wretched. I had not faith enough in myself to endure
avoidable responsibility. If my husband had not depended on me
for his happiness, I should have been jealous. So also with children. The
care would have so overpowered the joy,—the love would have so exceeded the
ordinary chances of life,—the fear on my part would have so impaired the
freedom on theirs, that I rejoice not to have been involved in a relation
for which I was, or believed myself unfit. The veneration in which I hold
domestic life has always shown me that that life was not for those whose
self‐respect had been early broken down, or had never grown. Happily, the
majority are free from this disability. Those who suffer under it had better
be as I,—as my observation of married, as well as single life assures me.
When I see what conjugal love is, in the extremely rare cases in which it is
seen in its perfection, I feel that there is a power of attachment in me
that has never been touched. When I am among little children, it frightens
me to think what my idolatry of my own children would have been. But,
through it all, I have ever been thankful to be alone. My strong will,
combined with anxiety of conscience, makes me fit only to live alone; and my
taste and liking are for living alone. The older I have grown, the more
serious and irremediable have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages of
married life, as it exists among us at this time: and I am provided with
what it is the bane of single life in ordinary cases to want,—substantial,
laborious and serious occupation. My business in life has been to think and
learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have
page: 102 thought and learned. The freedom is itself a
positive and never‐failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early
life. My work and I have been fitted to each other, as is proved by the
success of my work and my own happiness in it. The simplicity and
independence of this vocation first suited my infirm and ill‐developed
nature, and then sufficed for my needs, together with family ties and
domestic duties, such as I have been blessed with, and as every woman’s
heart requires. Thus, I am not only entirely satisfied with my lot, but
think it the very best for me,—under my constitution and circumstances: and
I long ago came to the conclusion that, without meddling with the case of
the wives and mothers, I am probably the happiest single woman in England.
Who could have believed, in that awful year 1826, that such would be my
conclusion a quarter of a century afterwards!

My health gave way, more and more; and my suffering throughout the year 1827
from the pain which came on every evening was such as it is disagreeable to
think of now. For pain of body and mind it was truly a terrible year, though
it had its satisfactions, one of the chief of which was a long visit which I
paid to my brother Robert and his wife (always a dear friend of mine to this
day) at their home in Dudley. I remember our walks in the grounds of Dudley
Castle, and the organ‐playing at home, after my brother’s business hours,
and the inexhaustible charm of the baby, as gleams amidst the darkness of
that season. I found then the unequalled benefit of long solitary walks in
such a case as mine. I had found it even at Norwich, in midwinter, when all
was bleak on that exposed level country; and now, amidst the beauty which
surrounds Dudley, there was no end of my walks or of my relish for them; and
I always came home with a cheered and lightened heart. Such poetry as I
wrote (I can’t bear to think of it) I wrote in those days. The mournful
pieces, and those which assume not to be mournful, which may be
found in my “Miscellanies” (published in America) may be referred to that
period. And so may some dull and doleful prose writings, published by the
solemn old Calvinistic publisher, Houlston, of Wellington in Shropshire. An
acquaintance
page: 103 of mine had some time
before put me in the way of correspondence with Houlston; and he had
accepted the first two little eightpenny stories I sent him. I remember the
amusement and embarrassment of the first piece of pecuniary success. As soon
as it was known in the house that the letter from Wellington contained five
pounds, every body wanted, and continued to want all day, to borrow five
pounds of me. After a pause, Houlston wrote to ask for another story of
somewhat more substance and bulk. My Globe newspaper readings suggested to
me, the subject of Machine‐breaking as a good one,—some recent outrages of
that sort having taken place: but I had not remotest idea that I was
meditating writing on Political Economy, the very name of which was then
either unknown to me, or conveyed no meaning. I wrote the little story
called “The Rioters;” and its success was such that some hosiers and
lacemakers of Derby and Nottingham sent me a request to write a tale on the
subject of Wages, which I did, calling it “The Turn Out.” The success of
both was such as to dispose Mr. Houlston to further dealings; and I wrote
for him a good many tracts, which he sold for a penny, and for which he gave
me a sovereign apiece. This seems to be the place in which to tell a fact or
two about the use made of those early writings of mine, by the old man’s
sons and successors. Old Houlston died not very long afterwards, leaving
among his papers, (I now remember,) a manuscript story of mine which I
suppose lies there still; about a good governess, called, I think, “Caroline
Shirley.” I mention this that, if that story should come out with my name
after my death, it may be known to have been written somewhere about this
time,—1827. Old Houlston died, on perfectly good terms with me, as far as I
remember. The next thing I heard was (and I heard it from various quarters)
that those little tracts of mine, and some of my larger tales, were selling
and circulating as Mrs. Sherwood’s,—Houlston being her publisher. This was
amusing; and I had no other objection to it than that it was not true. Next,
certain friends and relations of my own who went to the Houlstons’ shop in
Paternoster Row, and asked for any works by me, had foisted upon them any
rubbish that was
page: 104 convenient, under
pretence of its being mine. A dear old aunt was very mysterious and
complimentary to me, one day, on her return from London, about “Judith
Potts;” and was puzzled to find all her allusions lost upon me. At length,
she produced a little story so entitled, which had been sold to her as mine
over the Houlstons’ counter, and, as she believed, by Mr. Houlston himself.
This was rather too bad; for “Judith Potts” was not altogether a work that
one would wish to build one’s fame on: but there was worse to come. Long
years after, when such reputation as I have had was at its height, (when I
was ill at Tynemouth, about 1842) there had been some machine breaking; and
Messrs. Houlston and Stoneman (as the firm then stood) brought out afresh my
poor little early story of “The Rioters,” with my name in the title‐page for
the first time, and not only with every external appearance of being fresh,
but with interpolations and alterations which made it seem really so. For
instance, “His Majesty” was altered to “Her Majesty.” By advice of my
friends, I made known the trick far and wide; and I wrote to Messrs.
Houlston and Stoneman, to inform them that I was aware of their fraudulent
transaction, and that it was actionable. These caterers for the pious needs
of the religious world replied with insults, having nothing better to offer.
They pleaded my original permission to their father to use my name or not;
which was a fact, but no excuse for the present use of it: and to the
gravest part of the whole charge,—that of illegal alterations for the
fraudulent purpose of concealing the date of the book, they made no reply
whatever. I had reason to believe, however, that by the exertions of my
friends, the trick was effectually exposed. As far as I remember, this is
almost the only serious complaint I have had to make of any publisher,
during my whole career.

Meantime, in 1827 I was on excellent terms with old Houlston, and writing for
him a longer tale than I had yet tried my hand on. It was called “Principle
and Practice;” and it succeeded well enough to induce us to put forth a
“Sequel to Principle and Practice” three or four years after. These were all
that I wrote for Houlston, as far as I remember, except a little
page: 105 book whose appearance made me stand aghast. A
most excellent young servant of ours, who had become quite. a friend of the
household, went out to Madeira with my brother and his family, and confirmed
our attachment to her by her invaluable services to them. Her history was a
rather remarkable, and a very interesting one; and I wrote it in the form of
four of Houlston’s penny tracts. lie threw them together, and made a little
book of them; and the heroine, who would never have heard of them as tracts,
was speedily put in possession of her Memoirs in the form of the little book
called “My Servant Rachel.” An aunt of mine, calling on her one day, found
her standing in the middle of the floor, and her husband reading the book
over her shoulder. She was hurt at one anecdote,—which was certainly true,
but which she had forgotten: but, as a whole, it could not but have been
most gratifying to her. She ever after treated me with extreme kindness, and
even tenderness; and we are hearty friends still, whenever we meet.—And here
ends the chapter of my authorship in which Houlston, my first patron, was
concerned.

It was in the autumn of 1827, I think, that a neighbour lent my sister Mrs.
Marcet’s “Conversations on Political Economy.” I took up the book, chiefly
to see what Political Economy precisely was; and great was my surprise to
find that I had been teaching it unawares, in my stories about Machinery and
Wages. It struck me at once that the principles of the whole science might
be advantageously conveyed in the same way,—not by being smothered up in a
story, but by being exhibited in their natural workings in selected passages
of social life. It has always appeared very strange to me that so few people
seem to have understood this. Students of all manner of physical sciences
afterwards wanted me to “illustrate” things of which social life (and
therefore fiction) can afford no illustration. I used to say till I was
tired that none but moral and political science admitted of the method at
all; and I doubt whether many of those who talk about it understand the
matter, to this day. In the Edinburgh Review of my Political Economy
series,—a review otherwise as weak as it is kind,—there is the best
appreciation of
page: 106 the principle of the work
that I have seen any where; —a page or so* of perfect understanding of my
view and purpose. That view and purpose date from my reading of Mrs.
Marcet’s Conversations. During that reading, groups of personages rose up
from the pages, and a procession of action glided through its arguments, as
afterwards from the pages of Adam Smith, and all the other Economists. I
mentioned my notion, I remember, when we were sitting at work, one bright
afternoon at home. Brother James nodded assent; my mother said “do it;” and
we went to tea, unconscious what a great thing we had done since dinner.

There was meantime much fiddle‐faddling to be gone through, with such work as
“Principle and Practice” and the like. But a new educational period was
about to open.—My complaint grew so serious, and was so unbearably painful,
and, in truth, medically mismanaged at Norwich, that my family sent me to
Newcastle, to my sister’s, where her husband treated me successfully, and
put me in the way of entire cure. It was a long and painful business; but
the method succeeded; and, in the course of time, and by the unremitting
care of my host and hostess, I was sent home in a condition to manage
myself. It was some years before the stomach entirely recovered its tone;
but it was thoroughly healthy from that time forward.

While I was at Newcastle, a spirited advertisement from the new editor of the
Monthly Repository, Mr. Fox, met my eye, appealing for literary aid to those
who were interested in its objects. I could not resist sending a practical
reply; and I was gratified to learn, long afterwards, that when my name was
mentioned to Mr. Fox, before he issued his appeal, he had said that he
wished for my assistance from the moment when he, as editor, discovered from
the office books that I was the writer of certain papers which had fixed his
attention: but that he could not specially invite my contributions while he
had no funds which could enable him to offer due remuneration. His reply to
my first letter was so cordial that I was animated to offer him extensive
assistance; and if he had then no money to send me,

*Edinburgh
Review. Vol. lvii., pp. 6 and 7.

page: 107 he paid me in something more valuable—in a course of frank and generous
criticism which was of the utmost benefit to me. His editorial
correspondence with me was unquestionably the occasion, and in great measure
the cause, of the greatest intellectual progress I ever made before the age
of thirty. I sent him Essays, Reviews and poetry (or what I called such)—the
best specimens of which may be found in the “Miscellanies,” before
mentioned.—The Diffusion Society was at that time the last novelty. A member
of the Committee who overrated his own influence, invited me to write a Life
of Howard the Philanthropist, which I did, with great satisfaction, and
under the positive promise of thirty pounds for it. From time to time,
tidings were sent to me of its being approved, and at length of its being
actually in type. In the approaching crisis of my fortunes, when I humbly
asked when I might expect any part of the payment, I could obtain no clear
answer: and the end of the matter was that it was found that half‐a‐dozen or
more Lives of Howard had been ordered in a similar manner, by different
members of the Committee; that my manuscript was found, after several years,
at the bottom of a chest,—not only dirty, but marked and snipped,—its
contents having been abundantly used without any acknowledgment,—as was
afterwards admitted to me by some of the members who were especially
interested in the prison question. I am far from regretting the issue now,
because new materials have turned up which would have shamed that biography
out of existence: but the case is worth mentioning, as an illustration of
the way in which literary business is managed by corporate directories. I
believe most people who ever had any connexion with the Diffusion Society
have some similar story to tell.

While I was at Newcastle, a change, which turned out a very happy one, was
made in our domestic arrangements. My cousin, James Martineau Lee, who had
succeeded my brother as a surgeon at Norwich, having died that year, his
aged mother,—(my father’s only surviving sister) came to live with us; and
with us she remained till her death in 1840. She was hardly settled with us
when the last of our series of family misfortunes
page: 108 occurred. I call it a misfortune, because in
common parlance it would be so treated; but I believe that my mother and all
her other daughters would have joined heartily, if asked, in my conviction
that it was one of the best things that ever happened to us. My mother and
her daughters lost, at a stroke, nearly all they had in the world by the
failure of the house,—the old manufactory,—in which their money was placed.
We never recovered more than the merest pittance; and at the time, I, for
one, was left destitute;—that is to say, with precisely one shilling in my
purse. The effect upon me of this new “calamity,” as people called it, was
like that of a blister upon a dull, weary pain, or series of pains. I rather
enjoyed it, even at the time; for there was scope for action; whereas, in
the long, dreary series of preceding trials, there was nothing possible but
endurance. In a very short time, my two sisters at home and I began to feel
the blessing of a wholly new freedom. I, who had been obliged to write
before breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my
own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time
since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on
in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing, and
economizing, and growing narrower every year: whereas, by being thrown,
while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and
usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world
abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of
vegetated.

It was in June, 1829, that the old Norwich house failed. I had been spending
a couple of days at a country town, where the meeting of the provincial
Unitarian Association took place. Some of the members knew, on the last day,
what had happened to us; but I heard it first in the streets of Norwich on
my way to our own house. As well as I can remember, a pretty faithful
account of the event is given in one of my Political Economy tales,‐
“Berkeley the Banker;” mixed up however with a good many facts about other
persons and times. I need not give the story over again here, nor any part
of it but what is concerned in the history of my own mind and my own
work.—
page: 109 It was presently settled that
my mother, my dear old aunt and I should live on in the family house. One
sister went forth to earn the independence which she achieved after busy and
honourable years of successful exertion. The youngest was busy teaching and
training the children, chiefly, of the family, till her marriage.

The question was—what was I to do, with my deafness precluding
both music and governessing. I devised a plan for guiding the studies of
young people by correspondence, and sent out written proposals: but, while
every body professed to approve the scheme, no pupil ever offered. I was ere
long very glad of this; for the toil of the pen would have been great, with
small results of any kind, in comparison to those which accrued from what I
did write.—In the first place, I inquired about my “Life of Howard,” and
found, to my interior consternation, that there was no prospect in that
quarter. Nobody knew that I was left with only one shilling, insomuch that I
dreaded the arrival of a thirteenpenny letter, in those days of dear
postage. The family supposed me to be well‐supplied, through Houlston’s
recent payment for one of my little books: but that money had gone where all
the rest was. The sale of a ball‐dress brought me three pounds. That was
something. I hoped, and not without reason, that my needle would bring me
enough for my small expenses, for a time; and I did earn a good many pounds
by fancy‐work, in the course of the next year,—after which it ceased to be
necessary. For two years, I lived on fifty pounds a year. My mother, always
generous in money matters, would not hear of my paying my home expenses till
she saw that I should be the happier for her allowing it: and then she
assured me, and proved to me, that, as she had to keep house at all events,
and as my habits were exceedingly frugal (taking no wine, &c.)
thirty pounds a year would repay her for my residence. Twenty pounds more
sufficed for clothes, postage and sundries: and thus did I live, as long as
it was necessary, on fifty pounds a year.—I must mention here a gift which
dropped in upon me at that time which gave me more pleasure than any
money‐gift that I ever received. Our rich relations made
boun‐
page: 110 tiful
bountiful
presents to my sisters, for their outfit on leaving home: but they
supposed me in possession of the money they knew I had earned, and besides
concluded that I could not want much, as I was to stay at home. My
application about the Howard manuscript however came to the knowledge of a
cousin of mine,—then and ever since, to this hour, a faithful friend to me;
and he, divining the case, sent me ten pounds, in a manner so beautiful that
his few lines filled me with joy. That happened on a Sunday morning; and I
well remember what a happy morning it was. I had become too deaf now for
public worship; and I went every fair Sunday morning over the wildest bit of
country near Norwich,—a part of Mousehold, which was a sweet breezy common,
overlooking the old city in its most picturesque aspect. There I went that
Sunday morning; and I remember well the freshness of the turf and the beauty
of the tormentilla which bestarred it, in the light and warmth of that good
cousin’s kindness

I now wrote to Mr. Fox, telling him of my changed circumstances, which would
compel me to render less gratuitous service than hitherto to the
“Repository.” Mr. Fox replied by apologetically placing at my disposal the
only sum at his command at that time,—fifteen pounds a year, for which I was
to do as much reviewing as I thought proper. With this letter arrived a
parcel of nine books for review or notice. Overwhelming as this was, few
letters that I had ever received had given me more pleasure than this. Here
was, in the first place, work; in the next, continued literary discipline
under Mr. Fox; and lastly, this money would buy my clothes. So to work I
went, with needle and pen. I had before begun to study German; and now, that
study was my recreation; and I found a new inspiration in the world of
German literature, which was just opening, widely and brightly, before my
eager and awakened mind. it was truly life that I lived during
those days of strong intellectual and moral effort.

After I had received about a dozen books, Mr. Fox asked me to send him two or
three tales, such as his “best readers” would not pass by. I was flattered
by this request; but I had no idea
page: 111 that I
could fulfil his wish, any more than I could refuse to try. Now was the time
to carry out the notion I had formed on reading “Helon’s Pilgrimage to
Jerusalem,”—as I related above. I wrote “The Hope of the Hebrew” (the first
of the “Traditions of Palestine,”) and two others, as unlike it and each
other as I could make them:—viz, “Solitude and Society,” and “The Early
Sowing,”—the Unitarian City Mission being at that time under
deliberation.

I carried these stories to London myself, and put them into Mr. Fox’s own
hands,—being kindly invited for a long stay at the house of an uncle, in
pursuit of my own objects. The Hebrew tale was put forth first; and the day
after its appearance, such inquiries were made of Mr. Fox at a public dinner
in regard to the authorship that I was at once determined to make a volume
of them; and the “Traditions of Palestine” appeared accordingly, in the next
spring. Except that first story, the whole volume was written in a
fortnight. By this little volume was my name first made known in literature.
I still love the memory of the time when it was written, though there was
little other encouragement than my own pleasure in writing, and in the
literary discipline which I continued to enjoy under Mr. Fox’s editorship.
With him I always succeeded; but I failed in all other directions during
that laborious winter and spring. I had no literary acquaintance or
connexion whatever; and I could not get any thing that I wrote even looked
at; so that every thing went into the “Repository” at last. I do not mean
that any amount of literary connexion would necessarily have been of any
service to me; for I do not believe that “patronage,” “introductions” and
the like are of any avail, in a general way. I know this;—that I have always
been anxious to extend to young or struggling authors the sort of aid which
would have been so precious to me in that winter of 1829‐1830, and that, in
above twenty years, I have never succeeded but once. I obtained the
publication of “The Two Old Men’s Tales,”—the first of Mrs. Marsh’s novels:
but, from the time of my own success to this hour, every other attempt, of
the scores I have made, to get a hearing for young or new aspirants has
failed. My own
page: 112 heart was often very near
sinking,—as were my bodily forces; and with reason. During the daylight
hours of that winter, I was poring over fine fancy‐work, by which alone I
earned any money; and after tea, I went upstairs to my room, for my day’s
literary labour. The quantity I wrote, at prodigious expenditure of nerve,
surprises me now,—after my long breaking‐in to hard work. Every night that
winter, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three in the
morning,—obeying always the rule of the house,—of being present at the
breakfast table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I was in such a state
of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was obliged to walk to and fro in
the room before I could put on paper the last line of a page, or the last
half sentence of an essay or review. Yet was I very happy. The deep‐felt
sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of
all my faculties; and, not least, that of will to overcome my obstructions,
and force my way to that power of public speech of which I believed myself
more or less worthy. The worst apprehension I felt,—far worse than that of
disappointment, mortification and poverty,—was from the intense action of my
mind. Such excitement as I was then sustaining and enjoying could not always
last; and I dreaded the reaction, or the effects of its mere cessation. I
was beginning, however, to learn that the future,—our intellectual and moral
future,—had better be left to take care of itself, as long as the present is
made the best use of; and I found, in due course, that each period of the
mind’s training has its own excitements, and that the less its condition is
quacked, or made the subject of anticipation at all, the better for the
mind’s health. But my habit of anxiety was not yet broken. It was scarcely
weakened. I have since found that persons who knew me only then, do not
recognize me or my portraits now,—or at any tine within the last twenty
years. The frown of those old days, the rigid face, the sulky mouth, the
forbidding countenance, which looked as if it had never had a smile upon it,
told a melancholy story which came to an end long ago: but it was so far
from its end then that it amazes me now to think what liberality and
forbearance were requisite in the treatment of me by Mr. Fox
page: 113 and the friends I met at his house, and how
capable they were of that liberality. My Sabbatarian strictness, and my
prejudices on a hundred subjects must have been absurd and disagreeable
enough to them: but their gentleness, respect and courtesy were such as I
now remember with gratitude and pleasure. They saw that I was outgrowing my
shell, and they had patience with me till I had rent it and cast it off; and
if they were not equally ready with their sympathy when I had found freedom,
but disposed to turn from me, in proportion as I was able to take care of
myself, to do the same office for other incipient or struggling beings, this
does not lessen my sense of obligation to them for the help and support they
gave me in my season of intellectual and moral need.

My griefs deepened towards the close of that London visit. While failing in
all my attempts to get my articles even looked at, proposals were made to me
to remain in town, and undertake proof‐correcting and other literary
drudgery, on a salary which would, with my frugal habits, have supported me,
while leaving time for literary effort on my own account. I rejoiced
unspeakably in this opening, and wrote home in high satisfaction at the
offer which would enable my young sister,—then only eighteen,—to remain at
home, pursuing her studies in companionship with a beloved cousin of nearly
her own age, and gaining something like maturity and self‐reliance before
going out into the cold dark sphere of governessing. But, to my
disappointment,—I might almost say, horror,—my mother sent me peremptory
orders to go home, and to fill the place which my poor young sister was to
vacate. I rather wonder that, being seven and twenty years old, I did not
assert my independence, and refuse to return,—so clear as was, in my eyes,
the injustice of remanding me to a position of helplessness and dependence,
when a career of action and independence was opening before me. If I had
known what my young sister was thinking and feeling, I believe I should have
taken my own way, for her sake: but I did not know all: the instinct and
habit of old obedience prevailed, and I went home, with some resentment, but
far more grief and desolation in my heart. My mother afterwards looked
page: 114 back with surprise upon the
peremptoriness with which she had assumed the direction of my affairs; and
she told me, (what I had suspected before) that my well‐meaning hostess, who
knew nothing of literature, and was always perplexing me with questions as
to “how much I should get” by each night’s work, had advised my return home,
to pursue,—not literature but needlework, by which, she wrote, I had proved
that I could earn money, and in which career I should always have the
encouragement and support of herself and her family. (Nothing could be more
gracious than the acknowledgment of their mistake volunteered by this family
at a subsequent time.) My mother was wont to be guided by them, whenever
they offered their counsel; and this time it cost me very dear. I went down
to Norwich, without prospect,—without any apparent chance of independence;
but as fully resolved against being dependent as at any time before or
after.

My mother received me very tenderly. She had no other idea at the moment than
that she had been doing her best for my good; and I, for my part, could not
trust myself to utter a word of what was swelling in my heart. I arrived
worn and weary with a night journey; and my mother was so uneasy at my looks
that she made me lie down on her bed after breakfast, and, as I could not
sleep, came and sat by me for a talk.—My news was that the Central Unitarian
Association had advertized for prize Essays, by which Unitarianism was to be
presented to the notice of Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans. The Catholic
one was to be adjudicated on at the end of September (1830) and the other
two in the following March. Three sub‐committees were appointed for the
examination of the manuscripts sent in, and for decision on them: and these
sub‐committees were composed of different members, to bar all suspicion of
partiality. The essays were to be superscribed with a motto; and the motto
was to be repeated on a sealed envelope, containing the writer’s name, which
was not to be looked at till the prize was awarded; and then only in the
ease of the successful candidate. The prizes were, ten guineas for the
Catholic, fifteen for the Jewish, and twenty for the Mohammedan essay. I
told my mother, as
page: 115 she sat by the bedside,
of this gleam of a prospect for me; and she replied that she thought it
might be as well to try for one prize. My reply was “If I try at all, it
shall be for all.” The money reward was trifling, even in the eyes of one so
poor and prospectless as I was; but I felt an earnest desire to ascertain
whether I could write, as Mr. Fox and other personal friends said I could. I
saw that it was a capital opportunity for a fair trial of my competency in
comparison with others; and I believe it was no small consideration to me
that I should thus, at all events, tide over many months before I need admit
despair. My mother thought this rather desperate work; but she gave me her
sympathy and encouragement during the whole period of suspense,—as did the
dear old aunt who lived with us. No one else was to know; and my secret was
perfectly kept. The day after my return, I began to collect my materials;
and before the week was done, I had drawn out the scheme of my Essay, and
had begun it. It was done within a month; and then had to be copied, lest
any member of the sub‐committee should know my hand. I discovered a poor
school‐boy who wrote a good hand; and I paid him a sovereign which I could
ill spare for his work. The parcel was sent in a circuitous way to the
office in London: and then, while waiting in suspense, I wrote the Tale
called “Five Years of Youth,” which I have never looked at since, and have
certainly no inclination to read. Messrs. Darton and Harvey gave me twenty
pounds for this; and most welcome was such a sum at that time. It set me
forward through the toil of the Mohammedan Essay, which I began in October,
I think. The “Monthly Repository” for October contained a notification that
the sub‐committee sitting on the first of the three occasions had adjudged
the prize for the Catholic Essay to me; and the money was presently
forwarded. That announcement arrived on a Sunday morning and again I had a
charming walk over Mousehold, as in the year before, among the heather and
the bright tormentilla.

Next day, I went to the Public Library, and brought home Sale’s Koran. A
friend whom I met said “What do you bore yourself with that book for? You
will never get through it.”
page: 116 He little
guessed what I meant to get out of it, and out of Sale’s preliminary Essay.
It occurred to me that the apologue form would suit the subject best; and I
ventured upon it, though fearing that such daring might be fatal. One of the
sub‐committee, an eminent scholar, told me afterwards that it was this which
mainly influenced his suffrage in my favour. In five weeks, the work was
done: but my tribulation about its preparation lasted much longer; for the
careless young usher who undertook the copying was not only idle but saucy;
and it was doubtful to the last day whether the parcel could be in London by
the first of March. Some severe threatening availed however; and that and
the Jewish Essay, sent round by different hands (the hands of strangers to
the whole scheme) done up in different shapes, and in different kinds of
paper, and sealed with different wax and seals, were deposited at the office
on the last day of February. The Jewish Essay was beautifully copied by a
poor woman who wrote a clerk‐like hand. The titles of titles three Essays
were—

“The Essential Faith of the Universal Church” (to Catholics).

“The Faith as Unfolded by Many Prophets” (to Mohammedans).

“The Faith as Manifested through Israel” (to Jews).

The last of these was grounded on Lessing’s “Hundred Thoughts on the
Education of the Human Race,” which had taken my fancy amazingly, in the
course of my German studies,—fancy then being the faculty most concerned in
my religious views. Though my mind was already largely prepared for this
piece of work by study, and by having treated the theory in the “Monthly
Repository,” and though I enjoyed the task in a certain sense, it became
very onerous before it was done. I was by that time nearly as thin as
possible; and I dreamed of the destruction of Jerusalem, and saw the burning
of the Temple, almost every night. I might well be exhausted by that great
and portentous first of March; for the year had been one of tremendous
labour. I think it was in that year that a prize was offered by some
Unitarian authority or other for any Essay on Baptism, for which I competed,
but came in only third. If that was the year, my work stood thus:—my
literary work, I
page: 117 mean; for, in that season
of poverty, I made and mended every thing I wore,—knitting stockings while
reading aloud to my mother and aunt, and never sitting idle a minute. I may
add that I made considerable progress in the study of German that year. My
writings within the twelve months were as follows:

“Traditions of Palestine” (except the first tale).

“Five Years of Youth.”

Seven tracts for Houlston.

Essay on Baptism.

Three Theological Essays for prizes, and

Fifty‐two articles for the Monthly Repository.

By this time my mother was becoming aware of the necessity of my being a good
deal in London, if I was to have any chance in the field of literature; and
she consented to spare me for three months in the spring of every year. An
arrangement was made for my boarding at the house of a cousin for three
months from the first of March; and up I went, little dreaming what would be
happening, and how life would be opening before me, by that day
twelvemonths. One of my objects in the first instance was improving myself
in German. An admirable master brought me forward very rapidly, on extremely
low terms, in consideration of my helping him with his English prefaces to
some of his works. After a few weeks of hard work, writing and studying, I
accepted an invitation to spend a few days with some old friends in Kent.
There I refreshed myself among pretty scenery, fresh air, and pleasant
drives with hospitable friends, and with the study of Faust at night, till a
certain day, early in May, which was to prove very eventful to me. I
returned on the outside of the coach, and got down, with my heavy bag, at my
German master’s door, where I took a lesson. It was very hot; and I dragged
myself and my bag home, in great fatigue, and very hungry. Dinner was
ordered up again by my hostess, and I sat an hour, eating my dinner, resting
and talking. Then I was leaving the room, bonnet in hand, when a daughter of
my hostess seemed to recollect something, and called after me to say, “O, I
forgot! I suppose” (she was a very slow
page: 118
and hesitating speaker)‐“I suppose......you know......you know
about......those prizes......those prize essays, you know.”

“No ...... not I! What do you mean?”

“O! well, we thought ......... we thought you knew ...... ”

“Well,—but what?”

“O! you have ......... why, ... you have got all the prizes.”

“Why J! why did you not tell me so before?”

“O! I thought ...... I thought you might know.”

“How should I,—just up from the country? But what do you
know?”

“Why, only ......... only the Secretary of the Unitarian Association has been
here,—with a message,—with the news from the Committee.”—It was even so.

The next day was the Unitarian May Meeting; and I had come up from Kent to
attend it. I was shocked to hear, after the morning service, that, in
reading the Report in the evening, the whole story of the Essays must be
told, with the announcement of the result. I had reckoned for weeks on that
meeting, at which Rammohun Roy was to be present, and where the speaking was
expected to be particularly interesting; and neither liked to stay away nor
to encounter the telling of my story. Mr. and Mrs. Fox promised to put me
into a quiet pew if I would go as soon as the gates were opened. I did so;
but the Secretary came, among others, to be introduced, and to congratulate;
and I knew when the dreaded moment was coming, amidst his reading of the
Report, by a glance which he sent in my direction, to see if his wife, who
sat next me, was keeping up my attention. I thought the story of all the
measures and all the precautions taken by the various Committees the longest
I had ever sat under, and the silence with which it was listened to the very
deadest. I heard little indeed but the beating of my own heart. Then came
the catastrophe, and the clapping and the “Hear! Hear!” I knew that many of
my family connexions must be present, who would be surprised and gratified.
But there was one person more than I expected. I slipped out before the
meeting was over, and in the vestibule was met by my young sister with open
arms, and with an offer to go home
page: 119 with me
for the night. She was in the midst of an uncomfortable brief experiment of
governessing, a few miles from town, and had been kindly indulged with a
permission to go to this meeting, too late to let me know. She had arrived
late, and got into the gallery; and before she had been seated many minutes,
heard my news, so strangely told! She went home with me; and, after we had
written my mother the account of the day, we talked away nearly all the rest
of that May night.—It was truly a great event to me,—the greatest since my
brother’s reception of my first attempt in print. I had now found that I
could write, and I might rationally believe that authorship was my
legitimate career.

Of course, I had no conception at that time of the thorough weakness and
falseness of the views I had been conveying with so much pains and so much
complacency. This last act in connexion with the Unitarian body was a
bonâ fide one; but all was prepared
for that which ensued,—a withdrawal from the body through those regions of
metaphysical fog in which most deserters from Unitarianism abide for the
rest of their time. The Catholic essay was ignorant and metaphysical, if my
recollection of it is at all correct; and the other two mere fancy pieces:
and I can only say that if either Mohammedans or Jews have ever been
converted by them, such converts can hardly be rational enough to be worth
having. I had now plunged fairly into the spirit of my time,—that of
self‐analysis, pathetic self‐pity, typical interpretation of objective
matters, and scheme‐making, in the name of God and Man. That such was the
stage then reached by my mind, in its struggles upward and onward, there is
outstanding proof in that series of papers called “Sabbath Musings” which
may be found in the “Monthly Repository” of 1831. There are the papers: and
I hereby declare that I considered them my best production, and expected
they would outlive every thing else I had written or should write. I was, in
truth, satisfied that they were very fine writing, and believed it for long
after,—little aware that the time could ever come when I should write them
down, as I do now, to be morbid, fantastical, and therefore unphilosophical
and untrue. I cannot wonder that it
page: 120 did
not occur to the Unitarians (as far as they thought of me at all) that I was
really not of them, at the time that I had picked up their gauntlet, and
assumed their championship. If it did not occur to me, no wonder it did not
to them. But the clear‐sighted among them might and should have seen, by the
evidence of those essays themselves, that I was one of those merely nominal
Christians who refuse whatever they see to be impossible, absurd or immoral
in the scheme or the records of Christianity, and pick out and appropriate
what they like, or interpolate it with views, desires and imaginations of
their own. I had already ceased to be an Unitarian in the technical sense. I
was now one in the dreamy way of metaphysical accommodation, and on the
ground of dissent from every other form of Christianity: the time was
approaching when, if I called myself so at all, it was only in the
free‐thinking sense. Then came a few years during which I remonstrated with
Unitarians in vain against being claimed by them, which I considered even
more injurious to them than to me. They were unwilling, as they said, and as
I saw, to recognize the complete severance of the theological bond between
us: and I was careful to assert, in every practicable way, that it was no
doing of mine if they were taunted by the orthodox with their sectarian
fellowship with the writer of “Eastern Life.” At length, I hope and believe
my old co‐religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology
in toto, and that by no twisting of
language or darkening of its meanings can I be made out to have any thing
whatever in common with them about religious matters. I perceive that they
do not at all understand my views or the grounds of them, or the road to
them: but they will not deny that I understand theirs,—chosen expositor as I
was of them in the year 1831; and they must take my word for it that there
is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy. Our
stand‐point is different; and all our views and estimates are different
accordingly. Of course, I consider my stand‐point the truer one; and my
views and estimates the higher, wider, and more accurate, as I shall have
occasion to show. I consider myself the best qualified of the two parties to
judge of the relative value of the views
page: 121
of either, because I have the experience of both, while I see that they have
no comprehension of mine: but the point on which we may and ought to agree
is that my severance from their faith was complete and necessarily final
when I wrote “Eastern Life,” though many of them could not be brought to
admit it, nor some (whom I asked) to assert it at the time. While I saw that
many Unitarians resented as a slander the popular imputation that their sect
is “a harbourage for infidels,” I did not choose that they should have that
said of them in my case: and it is clear that if they were unwilling to
exchange a disownment with me, they could have no right to quarrel with that
imputation in future.

page: 122

SECTION IV.

MY prize‐money enabled me to go to Dublin, to visit my brother James
and his wife; and I staid there till September,—writing all the time, and
pondering the scheme of my Political Economy Series. I sketched out my plan
in a very small blue book which was afterwards begged of me as a relic by a
friend who was much with me at that time. My own idea was that my stories
should appear quarterly. My brother and the publishers urged their being
monthly. The idea was overwhelming at first: and there were times when truly
I was scared at other parts of the scheme than that. The whole business was
the strongest act of will that I ever committed myself to; and my will was
always a pretty strong one. I could never have even started my project but
for my thorough, well‐considered, steady conviction that the work was
wanted,—was even craved by the popular mind. As the event proved me right,
there is no occasion to go into the evidence which determined my judgment. I
now believed that for two years I must support an almost unequalled amount
of literary labour: that, owing to the nature of some of the subjects to be
treated, my effort would probably be fatal to my reputation: that the
chances of failure in a scheme of such extent, begun without money or
interest, were most formidable; and that failure would be ruin. I staked my
all upon this project, in fact, and with the belief that long, weary months
must pass before I could even discern the probabilities of the issue; for
the mere preparations must occupy months. In the first place,—in that autumn
of 1831,—I strengthened myself in certain resolutions, from which I promised
myself that no power on earth should draw me away. I was resolved that, in
the first place, the thing should be done. The people wanted the book; and
they should have it. Next, I
page: 123 resolved to
sustain my health under the suspense, if possible, by keeping up a mood of
steady determination, and unfaltering hope. Next, I resolved never to lose
my temper, in the whole course of the business. I knew I was right; and
people who are aware that they are in the right need never lose temper.
Lastly, I resolved to refuse, under any temptation whatever, to accept any
loan from my kind mother and aunt. I felt that I could never get over
causing them any pecuniary loss,—my mother having really nothing to spare,
and my aunt having been abundantly generous to the family already. My own
small remnant of property (which came to nothing after all) I determined to
risk; and, when the scheme began to take form, I accepted small loans from
two opulent friends, whom I was able presently to repay. They knew the risks
as well as I; and they were men of business; and there was no reason for
declining the timely aid, so freely and kindly granted. What those months of
suspense were like, it is necessary now to tell.

I wrote to two or three publishers from Dublin, opening my scheme; but one
after another declined having any thing to do with it, on the ground of the
disturbed state of the public mind, which afforded no encouragement to put
out new books. The bishops had recently thrown out the Reform Bill; and
every body was watching the progress of the Cholera,—then regarded with as
much horror as a plague of the middle ages. The terrifying Order in Council
which froze men’s hearts by its doleful commands and recommendations, was
issued just at the same time with my poor proposals; and no wonder that I
met only refusals. Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock, however, requested me to
take London on my way back to Norwich, that we might discuss the subject. I
did so; and I took with me as a witness a lawyer cousin who told me long
afterwards what an amusing scene it was to him. Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock
sat superb in their arm‐chairs, in their brown wigs, looking as cautious as
possible, but relaxing visibly under the influence of my confidence. My
cousin said that, in their place, he should have felt my confidence a
sufficient guarantee,—so fully as I assigned the grounds of it: and Messrs.
Baldwin and Cradock seemed to be
page: 124 nearly of
the same mind, though they brought out a long string of objections,
beginning with my proposed title, and ending with the Reform Bill and the
Cholera. They wanted to suppress the words Political Economy altogether: but
I knew that science could not be smuggled in anonymously. I gave up the
point for the time, feeling assured that they would find their smuggling
scheme impracticable. “Live and let live” was their title; and
its inadequacy was vexatious enough, as showing their imperfect conception
of the plan: but it was necessary to let them have their own way in the
matter of preliminary advertising. They put out a sort of feeler in the form
of an advertisement in some of the Diffusion Society’s publications; but an
intimation so vague and obscure attracted no notice. This melancholy fact
Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock duly and dolefully announced to me. Still, they
did not let go for some time; and I afterwards heard that they were so near
becoming my publishers that they had actually engaged a stitcher for my
monthly numbers. Fortunately for me, as it turned out, but most
discouragingly at the time, they withdrew, after a hesitation of many weeks.
They had read and approved of a part of the manuscript of “Life in the
Wilds,”—my first number: but they went on doubting; and at last wrote to me
that, considering the public excitement about the Reform Bill and the
Cholera, they dared not venture.

Here was the whole work to begin again. I stifled my sighs, and swallowed my
tears, and wrote to one publisher after another, receiving instant refusals
from all, except Messrs. Whittaker. They kept up the negotiation for a few
posts, but at length joined the general chorus about the Reform Bill and the
Cholera. They offered, however, to do their best for the work as mere
publishers, on the usual terms of commission. My mother and aunt re‐urged my
accepting a loan from them of money which they were willing to risk in such
a cause: but of course I would not hear of this. Mr. Fox appeared at that
time earnest in the project; and a letter from him came by the same post
with Messrs. Whittakers’ last, saying that booksellers might be found to
share the risk; and he named one (who, like Baldwin and Cradock, afterwards
failed) who would be likely to go
page: 125 halves
with me in risk and profit. I did not much relish either the plan or the
proposed publisher; but I was in no condition to refuse suggestions. I said
to my mother, “You know what a man of business would do in my
case.”—“What?”—“Go up to town by the next mail, and see what is to be
done.“—“My dear, you would not think of doing such a thing, alone, and in
this weather!”—“I wish it.”—“Well, then, let us show Henry the letters after
dinner, and see what he will say.”—As soon as the cloth was removed, and we
had drawn round the fire, I showed my brother Henry the letters, with the
same remark I had made to my mother. He sat looking into the fire for
several minutes, while nobody spoke: and then he turned to me, and said
oracularly “Go!”—I sprang up,—sent to have my place taken by the early
morning coach, tied up and dispatched borrowed books, and then ran to my
room to pack. There I found a fire, and my trunk airing before it. All was
finished an hour before tea time; and I was at leisure to read to my old
ladies for the rest of the evening. On my mother observing that she could
not have done it, my aunt patted me on the shoulder, and said that, at
least, the back was fitted to the burden. This domestic sympathy was most
supporting to me; but, at the same time, it rendered success more
stringently necessary.

My scheme of going to London was not at all a wild one, unless the speed of
the movement, and the state of the weather made it so. It was the beginning
of December, foggy and sleety. I was always sure of a home in London, with
or without notice; and without notice I presented myself at my cousin’s door
that dreary December Saturday night. It was a great Brewery house, always
kept open, and cooking daily going on, for the use of the partners. My kind
cousin and his family were to leave home the next morning, for three weeks:
but, as he observed, this would rather aid than hinder my purposes, as I
went for work. I was really glad to be alone during those three eventful
weeks,—feeling myself no intruder, all the while, and being under the care
of attentive servants.

My first step on Monday was seeing the publisher mentioned
page: 126 by Mr. Fox. He shook his head; his wife smiled;
and he begged to see the opening chapters, promising to return them, with a
reply, in twenty‐four hours. His reply was what was already burnt in upon my
brain. He had “no doubt of the excellence,—wished it success—but feared that
the excitement of the public mind about the Reform Bill and the Cholera
would afford it no chance,” &c., &c. I was growing as sick
of the Reform Bill as poor King William himself. I need not detail, even if
I could remember, the many applications I made in the course of the next few
days. Suffice it that they were all unsuccessful, and for the same alleged
reasons. Day after day, I came home weary with disappointment, and with
trudging many miles through the clay of the streets, and the fog of the
gloomiest December I ever saw. I came home only to work; for I must be ready
with two first numbers in case of a publisher turning up any day. All the
while, too, I was as determined as ever that my scheme should be fulfilled.
Night after night, the Brewery clock struck twelve, while the pen was still
pushing on in my trembling hand. I had promised to take one day’s rest, and
dine and sleep at the Foxes’. Then, for the first time, I gave way, in spite
of all my efforts. Some trifle having touched my feelings before saying
“Good‐night,” the sluices burst open, and I cried all night. In the morning,
Mr. Fox looked at me with great concern, stepped into the next room, and
brought a folded paper to the breakfast table, saying “Don’t read this now.
I can’t bear it. These are what may be called terms from my brother.” (A
young bookseller who did not pretend to have any business, at that time.) “I
do not ask you even to consider them; but they will enable you to tell
publishers that you hold in your hand terms offered by a publisher: and this
may at least procure attention to your scheme.” These were, to the
subsequent regret of half a score of publishers, the terms on which my work
was issued at last.

I immediately returned to town, and went straight to Whittaker’s. Mr.
Whittaker looked bored, fidgeted, yawned, and then said, with extreme
rudeness, “I have told you already that these are not times for new
enterprises.” “Then,” said I, rising,
page: 127 “it
is now time for me to consider the terms from another publisher which I hold
in my hand.” “O, indeed,—really, Ma’am?” said he, reviving. “Do me the
favour to give me a short time for consideration. Only twenty‐four hours,
Ma’am.” I refreshed his memory about the particulars, and endeavoured to
make him see why the times were not unseasonable for this special work,
though they might be for light literature.

It was next necessary to look at the paper I had been carrying. I read it
with dismay. The very first stipulation was that the work should be
published by subscription: and, moreover, the subscription must be for five
hundred copies before the work began. Subscribers were to be provided by
both parties; and Charles Fox was to have half the profits, besides the
usual bookseller’s commission and privileges. The agreement was to cease at
the end of any five numbers, at the wish of either party. As Charles Fox had
neither money nor connexion, I felt that the whole risk was thrown upon me;
and that I should have all the peril, as well as the toil, while Charles Fox
would enjoy the greater part of the proceeds, in case of success, and be
just where he was before, in case of failure. In fact, he never procured a
single subscriber; and he told me afterwards that he knew from the beginning
that he never should. After pondering this heart‐sickening Memorandum, I
looked with no small anxiety for Whittaker’s final reply. I seemed to see
the dreaded words through the envelope; and there they were within. Mr.
Whittaker expressed his “regrets that the public mind being so engrossed
with the Reform Bill and the approach of the Cholera,” &c.,
&c. The same story to the end! Even now, in this low depth of
disappointment, there were lower depth to be explored. The fiercest trial
was now at hand.

I remonstrated strongly with Mr. Fox about the subscription stipulation; but
in vain. The mortification to my pride was not the worst part of it, though
that was severe enough. I told him that I could not stoop to that method, if
any other means were left; to which he replied “You will stoop to conquer.”
But he had no consolation to offer under the far more serious anxiety which
I strove to impress on his mind as my main
ob‐
page: 128 jection
objection
to the scheme. Those persons from whom I might hope for pecuniary
support were precisely those to whom I despaired of conveying any conception
of my aim, or of the object and scope of my work. Those who would, I
believed, support it were, precisely, persons who had never seen or heard of
me, and whose support could not be solicited. My view was the true one, as I
might prove by many pages of anecdote. Suffice it that, at the very time
when certain members of parliament were eagerly inquiring about the
announced work, the wife of one of them, a rich lady of my acquaintance, to
whom a prospectus had been sent, returned it, telling me that she “knew too
well what she was about to buy a pig in a poke:” and the husband of a cousin
of mine, a literary man in his way, sent me, in return for the prospectus, a
letter, enclosing two sovereigns, and a lecture against my rashness and
presumption in supposing that I was adequate to such work as authorship, and
offering the enclosed sum as his mite towards the subscription; but
recommending rather a family subscription which might eke out my earnings by
my needle. I returned the two sovereigns, with a declaration that I wished
for no subscribers but those who expected full value for their payment, and
that I would depend upon my needle and upon charity when I found I could not
do better, and not before. This gentleman apologised handsomely afterwards.
The lady never did. It should be remembered that it is easy enough to laugh
at these incidents now; but that it was a very different matter then, when
success seemed to be growing more and more questionable and difficult every
day. I had no resource, however, but to try the method I heartily
disapproved and abhorred. I drew up a Prospectus, in which I avoided all
mention of a subscription, in the hope that it might soon be dispensed with,
but fully explanatory of the nature and object of the work. To this I added
in my own handwriting an urgent appeal to all whom I could ask to be
subscribers. I went to Mr. Fox’s, one foggy morning, to show him one of
these, and the advertisement intended for the next day’s papers, announcing
the first of February as the day of publication: (for it was now too late to
open with the year). I found Mr. Fox in a mood as gloomy
page: 129 as the day. He had seen Mr. James Mill, who had
assured him that my method of exemplification,—(the grand principle of the
whole scheme) could not possibly succeed; and Mr. Fox now required of me to
change my plan entirely, and issue my Political Economy in a didactic form!
Of course, I refused. He started a multitude of objections,—feared every
thing, and hoped nothing. I saw, with anguish and no little resentment, my
last poor chance slipping from me. I commanded myself while in his presence.
The occasion was too serious to be misused. I said to him “I see you have
taken fright. If you wish that your brother should draw back, say so
now. Here is the advertisement. Make up your mind before it
goes to press.” He replied, “I do not wish altogether to draw back.” “Yes,
you do,” said I: “and I had rather you would say so at once. But I tell you
this:—‐the people want this book, and they shall have it.” “I
know that is your intention,” he replied: “but I own I do not see how it is
to come to pass.”—“Nor I: but it shall. So, say that you have
done with it, and I will find other means.” “I tell you, I do not wish
altogether to draw out of it; but I cannot think of my brother going on
without decisive success at the outset.” “What do you mean, precisely?” “I
mean that he withdraws at the end of two numbers, unless the success of the
work is secured in a fortnight.” “What do you mean by success being
secured?” “You must sell a thousand in a fortnight.” “In a fortnight! That
is unreasonable! Is this your ultimatum?” “Yes.” “We shall
not sell a thousand in the first fortnight: nevertheless, the work shall not
stop at two numbers. It shall go on to five, with or without your brother.”
“So I perceive you say.” “What is to be done with this advertisement?” I
inquired. “Shall I send it,—yes or no?” “Yes: but remember Charles gives up
at the end of two numbers, unless you sell a thousand in the first
fortnight.”

I set out to walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery. I could not
afford to ride, more or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill
to walk at all. On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I became too giddy to
stand without support; and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending to
look at a cabbage
page: 130 bed, but saying to
myself, as I stood with closed eyes, “My book will do yet.” I moved on as
soon as I could, apprehending that the passers‐by took me to be drunk: but
the pavement swam before my eyes so that I was glad enough to get to the
Brewery. I tried to eat some dinner; but the vast rooms, the plate and the
liveried servant were too touching a contrast to my present condition; and I
was glad to go to work, to drown my disappointment in a flow of ideas.
Perhaps the piece of work that I did may show that I succeeded. I wrote the
Preface to my “Illustrations of Political Economy” that evening; and I
hardly think that any one would discover from it that I had that day sunk to
the lowest point of discouragement about my scheme.—At eleven o’clock, I
sent the servants to bed. I finished the Preface just after the Brewery
clock had struck two. I was chilly and hungry: the lamp burned low, and the
fire was small. I knew it would not do to go to bed, to dream over again the
bitter disappointment of the morning. I began now, at last, to doubt whether
my work would ever see the light. I thought of the multitudes who needed
it,—and especially of the poor,—to assist them in managing their own
welfare. I thought too of my own conscious power of doing this very thing.
Here was the thing wanting to be done, and I wanting to do it; and the one
person who had seemed best to understand the whole affair now urged me to
give up either the whole scheme, or, what was worse, its main principle! It
was an inferior consideration, but still, no small matter to me, that I had
no hope or prospect of usefulness or independence if this project failed:
and I did not feel that night that I could put my heart into any that might
arise. As the fire crumbled, I put it together till nothing but dust and
ashes remained; and when the lamp went out, I lighted the chamber candle;
but at last it was necessary to go to bed; and at four o’clock I went, after
crying for two hours, with my feet on the fender. I cried in bed till six,
when I fell asleep; but I was at the breakfast table by half‐past eight, and
ready for the work of the day.

The work of the day was to prepare and send out my Circulars. After preparing
enough for my family, I took into my
page: 131
confidence the before‐mentioned cousin,—my benefactor and my host at that
time. He was regarded by the whole clan as a prudent and experienced man of
business; and I knew that his countenance would be of great value to me.
That countenance he gave me, and some good suggestions, and no
discouragement.—It was very disagreeable to have to appeal to monied
relations whose very confidence and generosity would be a burden on my mind
till I had redeemed my virtual pledges; while the slightest indulgence of a
critical spirit by any of them must be exceedingly injurious to my
enterprise. It was indeed not very long before I had warnings from various
quarters that some of my relations were doing me “more harm by their tongues
than they could ever do good by their guineas.” This was true, as the
censors themselves have since spontaneously and handsomely told me. I could
not blame them much for saying what they thought of my rashness and conceit,
while I cordially honer the candour of their subsequent confession: but
their sayings were so much added to the enormous obstructions of the case.
From my first act of appeal to my monied relations, however, I derived such
singular solace that every incident remains fresh in my mind, and I may
fairly indulge in going over it once more.

My oldest surviving uncle and his large family, living near Clapham, had
always been ready and kind in their sympathy; and I was now to find the
worth of it more than ever in connexion with the greatest of my enterprises.
On the next Sunday, I returned with them when they went home from Chapel.
While at luncheon, my uncle told me that he understood I had some new plan,
and he was anxious to know what it was. His daughters proposed that I should
explain it after dinner, when their brothers would be present. After dinner,
accordingly, I was called upon for my explanation, which I gave in a very
detailed way. All were silent, waiting for my uncle to make his remark, the
very words of which I distinctly remember, at the distance of nearly a
quarter of a century. In his gentle and gracious manner he said, “You are a
better judge, my dear, than we of this scheme; but we know that your
industry and energy are the pride of us all, and ought to have our support.”
When we
page: 132 ladies went to the drawing‐room, I
knew there would be a consultation between my uncle and his sons: and so
there was. At the close of the pleasant evening, he beckoned to me, and made
me sit beside him on the sofa, and told me of the confidence of his family
and himself that what I was doing would be very useful: that his daughters
wished for each a copy of the Series, his sons two each; and that he himself
must have five. “And,” he concluded, “as you will like to pay your printer
immediately, you shall not wait for our money.” So saying, he slipped a
packet of bank notes and gold into my hand, to the amount of payment for
fourteen copies of the whole series! To complete the grace of his
hospitality, he told me that he should go to town late the next morning, and
would escort me; and he desired me to sleep as late as I liked. And I did
sleep,—the whole night through, and awoke a new creature. Other members of
the family did what they thought proper, in the course of the week; and then
I had only to go home, and await the result.

I was rather afraid to show myself to my mother,—thin as I was, and yellow,
and coughing with every breath; and she was panic‐struck at the evident
symptoms of liver‐complaint which the first half‐hour disclosed. I was
indeed in wretched health; and during the month of April following, when I
was writing “Demerara,” I was particularly ill. I do not think I was ever
well again till, at the close of 1833, I was entirely laid aside, and
confined to my bed for a month, by inflammation of the liver. I am confident
that that serious illness began with the toils and anxieties, and long walks
in fog and mud, of two years before. My mother took my health in hand
anxiously and most tenderly. In spite of my entreaties, she would never
allow me to be wakened in the morning; and on Sundays, the day when Charles
Fox’s dispatches came by a manufacturer’s parcel, my breakfast was sent up
to me, and I was not allowed to rise till the middle of the day. For several
weeks I dreaded the arrival of the publisher’s weekly letter. He always
wrote gloomily, and sometimes rudely. The subscription proceeded very little
better than I had anticipated. From first to last, about three hundred
copies were subscribed for: and before that number had been reached, the
page: 133 success of the work was such as to make
the subscription a mere burden. It was a thoroughly vexatious part of the
business altogether,—that subscription. A clever suggestion of mother’s, at
this time, had, I believe, much to do with the immediate success of the
book. By her advice, I sent, by post, a copy of my Prospectus (without a
word about subscription in it) to almost every member of both Houses of
Parliament. There was nothing of puffery in this,—nothing that I had the
least objection to do. It was merely informing our legislators that a book
was coming out on their particular class of subjects.

I may as well mention in this place, that I had offered (I cannot at all
remember when) one of my tales,—the one which now stands as “Brooke and
Brooke Farm,”—to the Diffusion Society, whence it had been returned. Absurd
as were some the stories afterwards set afloat about this transaction, there
was thus much foundation for them. Mr. Knight, then the publisher of the
Society, sent me a note of cordial and generous encouragement; but a
sub‐committee, to whose judgment the manuscript was consigned, thought it
“dull,” and pronounced against its reception accordingly. I knew nothing
about this sub‐committee, or about the method employed, and had in fact
forgotten, among so many failures, that particular one, when, long after, I
found to my regret and surprise, that the gentlemen concerned had been
supposing me offended and angry all the while, and somehow an accomplice in
Lord Brougham’s mockery of their decision. In vain I told them that I now
thought them perfectly right to form and express their own judgment, and
that I had never before heard who had been my judges. I fear the soreness
remains in their minds to this day, though there never was any in mine. Lord
Brougham’s words travelled far and wide, and were certainly anything but
comfortable to the subcommittee. He said he should revive the torture for
their sakes, as hanging was too good for them. He tore his hair over the
tales, he added, unable to endure that the whole Society, “instituted for
the very purpose, should be driven out of the field by a little deaf woman
at Norwich.”—As I have said, I cannot remember at what time I made my
application; but I imagine
page: 134 it must have
been during that eventful year 1831,—in which case the writing of that story
must come into the estimate of the work of that year.

A cheering incident occurred during the interval of awaiting the effects of
the Circular. Every body knows that the Gurneys are the great bankers of
Norwich. Richard Hanbury Gurney, at that time one of the Members for
Norfolk, was in the firm; and he was considered to be one of the
best‐informed men in England on the subject of Currency. The head officer of
the bank, Mr. Simon Martin, deserved the same reputation, and had it, among
all who knew him. He sent for my brother Henry, who found him with my
Circular before him. He said that he had a message to communicate to me from
the firm: and the message was duly delivered, when Mr. Martin had satisfied
himself that my brother conscientiously believed me adequate to my
enterprise. Messrs. Gurney considered the scheme an important one, promising
public benefit: they doubted whether it would be immediately appreciated:
they knew that I could not afford to go on at a loss, but thought it a pity
that a beneficial enterprise should fall to the ground for want of immediate
support: and they therefore requested that, in case of discouragement in
regard to the sale, I should apply to them before giving up. “Before she
gives up, let her come to us,” were their words: words which were as
pleasant to me in the midst of my success as they could have been if I had
needed the support so generously offered.

Meantime the weekly letter grew worse and worse. But on the Sunday preceding
the day of publication came a bit of encouragement in the shape of a
sentence in these, or nearly these words. “I see no chance of the work
succeeding unless the trade take it up better. We have only one considerable
booksellers’ order—from A and B for a hundred copies.” “Why, there,” said my
mother, “is a hundred towards your thousand!” “Ah, but,” said I, “where are
the other nine hundred to come from, in a fortnight?” The edition consisted
of fifteen hundred.

To the best of my recollection, I waited ten days from the day
page: 135 of publication, before I had another line from
the publisher. My mother, judging from his ill‐humour, inferred that he had
good news to tell: whereas I supposed the contrary. My mother was right; and
I could now be amused at his last attempts to be discouraging in the midst
of splendid success. At the end of those ten days, he sent with his letter a
copy of my first number, desiring me to make with all speed any corrections
I might wish to make, as he had scarcely any copies left. He added that the
demand led him to proposed that we should now print two thousand. A
postscript informed me that since he wrote the above, he had found that we
should want three thousand. A second postscript proposed four thousand, and
a third five thousand. The letter was worth having, now it had come. There
was immense relief in this; but I remember nothing like intoxication;—like
any painful reaction whatever. I remember walking up and down the grassplat
in the garden (I think it was on the tenth of February) feeling that my
cares were over. And so they were. From that hour, I have never had any
other anxiety about employment than what to choose, nor any real care about
money. Eight or nine years after, I found myself entirely cut off by illness
from the power of working; and then my relations and friends aided me in
ways so generous as to make it easy for me to accept the assistance. But
even then, I was never actually pinched for money; and, from the time that
the power of working was restored, I was at once as prosperous as ever, and
became more and more so till now, when illness has finally visited me in a
condition of independence. I think I may date my release from pecuniary care
from that tenth of February, 1832.

The entire periodical press, daily, weekly, and, as soon as possible,
monthly, came out in my favour; and I was overwhelmed with newspapers and
letters, containing every sort of flattery. The Diffusion Society wanted to
have the Series now; and Mr. Hume offered, on behalf of a new society of
which he was the head, any price I would name for the purchase of the whole.
I cannot precisely answer for the date of these and other applications; but,
as far as I remember, there was, from the middle of
page: 136 February onwards, no remission of such
applications, the meanest of which I should have clutched at a few weeks
before. Members of Parliament sent down blue books through the post‐office,
to the astonishment of the postmaster, who one day sent word that I must
send for my own share of the mail, for it could not be carried without a
barrow;—an announcement which, spreading in the town, caused me to be stared
at in the streets. Thus began that sort of experience. Half the
hobbies of the House of Commons, and numberless notions of individuals,
anonymous and other, were commended to me for treatment in my Series, with
which some of them had no more to do than geometry or the atomic theory. I
had not calculated on this additional labour, in the form of correspondence;
and very weary I often was of it, in the midst of the amusement. One
necessity arose out of it which soon became very clear,—that I must reside
in London, for the sake of the extensive and varied information which I now
found was at my service there, and which the public encouragement of my work
made it my duty to avail myself of.

It seemed hard upon my kind mother and aunt that the first consequence of the
success they buoyed me up in hoping for should be to take me to London,
after all: but the events of the summer showed them the necessity of the
removal. We treated it as for a time; and I felt that my mother would not
endure a permanent separation. The matter ended in their joining me in a
small house in London, before many months were over: and meantime, my mother
stipulated for my being in the house of some family well known to her. I
obtained lodgings in the house of a tailor in Conduit Street, whose
excellent wife had been an acquaintance of ours from her childhood to her
marriage. There I arrived in November, 1832; and there I lodged till the
following September, when I went, with my mother and aunt, into a house (No.
17) in Fludyer Street, Westminster, where I resided till the breakdown of my
health (which took place in 1839) removed me from London altogether.

Here I stop, thinking that the third period of my life may be considered as
closing with the conquest of all difficulty about
page: 137 getting a hearing from the public for what I felt
I had to say. Each period of my life has had its trials and heart‐wearing
difficulties,—except (as will be seen) the last; but in none had the pains
and penalties of life a more intimate connexion with the formation of
character than in the one which closes here. And now the summer of my life
was bursting forth without any interval of spring. My life began with
winter, burst suddenly into summer, and is now ending with autumn,—mild and
sunny. I have had no spring: but that cannot be helped now. It was a moral
disadvantage, as well as a great loss of happiness: but we all have our
moral disadvantages to make the best of; and “happiness” is
not, as the poet says, “our being’s end and aim,” but the
result of one faculty among many, which must be occasionally overborne by
others, if there is to be any effectual exercise of the whole being. So I am
satisfied in a higher sense than that in which the Necessarian is always
satisfied. I cannot but know that in my life there has been a great waste of
precious time and material: but I had now, by thirty years of age,
ascertained my career, found occupation, and achieved independence; and thus
the rest of my life was provided with its duties and its interests. Any one
to whom that happens by thirty years of age may be satisfied; and I was
so.